


Skin Game

by notmanos



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, HitWitch, Shifter, bad parents for everyone, capitalism is the real monster, homeless, mark trauma, that's gotta hurt, tired Cas, too many hills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23873617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notmanos/pseuds/notmanos
Summary: (Season 11) An acquaintance alerts Sam and Dean to a spate of homeless and street kids disappearing in Tacoma. But the investigation takes an odd and grisly turn, leaving them scrambling to find answers before they're the next targets.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	1. All Is Violent, All Is Bright

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't going to do this again, but *gestures at world*. So i guess I'm back on my bullshit again.

Dean was getting ready to head out for a night on the town when his phone hummed in his pocket. He pulled it out to see an unknown number on the display. Could be bad news - but then again, was it ever good news? Not when you were a monster hunter, it wasn’t. “Yeah?”

“Is this Dean Winchester?” the voice was male, and kind of young. Familiar a bit too? Hard to say.

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Ramon Ramirez.” After a pause, where Dean was still wracking his brain, Ramon added, “Dingo.”

“Oh!” Okay, yeah, the street kid they ran into last time they were helping out Jody, with a weird “headless monster” case. Of course, the headless monsters turned out to be but a small part of the whole thing, but at the end, Jody knew of a person who ran a sort of halfway house for kids who were below legal age, but couldn’t return home because their parents were abusive assholes. That’s where they sent Dingo a/k/a Ramon. It was in Tacoma, wasn’t it? “Yeah, hey. What’s up?”

“Could those vampires have followed me out here?”

“Absolutely not.” As part of the general monster problem, they also came across some vampires who were killing the homeless population and street kids, and cleaned out most of the nest. Except for two, the most annoying, pseudo-Gothic Lolita type poseurs who named themselves Bellatrix and Draco. Even Sam rolled his eyes at that. When they were done with the headless monster case, he and Sam pondered what would be the stupidest move possible if they were those vampires. They settled on moving only one state over, and that’s how they found Bellatrix and Draco back to their old feeding off the indigent routine in North Dakota, where they stood out like Hawaiian shirts at a funeral. In a strange way, Dean was kind of offended by them, because he had known some decent vampires in his life. Maybe not many, but some who tried to fight their urges, and didn’t kill people like their supply was infinite, and also weren’t as dumb as a bag of hammers. Those fucking clowns were an affront to all monsters, honestly. Both cruel and vapid. “We killed them.”

Ramon sighed, but he didn’t seem all that relieved. “I think ... I think there’s some vampires here doing the same thing.”

Dean wouldn’t have been shocked. Too many evil shitheads liked “easy” targets. “Have you seen some?”

“No, it’s just that ...” He sniffed, and Dean realized why he sounded so congested - he was crying. “Okay, so, a lot of people have been disappearing, and I tried to tell the cops but they don’t care. They say they’re a transient population, and they don’t -“

He was talking so fast, Dean could barely keep up. “Ramon? I need you to stop and take a breath, okay?”

“Okay.” Ramon did, and his breath was shuddery, but it was a start. 

“Now, what the hell happened? Specifically.”

“Tonight, I got a call from my friend, Zack, tonight. The reception was terrible, but he told me something was after him. and the call cut off. I tried to call him back, but he’s not picking up, and I’ve been all over where he usually is, and I can’t find him, and I’m afraid the vampires or whatever the fuck have gotten him too.”

“He said thing, not person. You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. And I wasn’t gonna call you until I had proof, but now it’s personal and I’m afraid I’ve waited too long. And if he’s dead, it’s all my fault.”

“No, it isn’t. Now, do you have somewhere safe you go?” Well, so much for checking out that new bar tonight. It probably would have only disappointed him anyway. Lately, they all pretty much had. Of course, you could make an argument that he wasn't quite feeling like himself lately, but Dean wasn't convinced that it was a bad thing.  


“Yeah.”

“Okay, go there now and text me your address. We'll get there as soon as we can.” Well, so much for a quiet night. He should have known better.

Actually, save for the apocalypse on the near horizon, it had actually been quiet the last couple of days. It had been a rare time where he almost got a minute to be bored, and then a reminder of the world collapsing awoke a restless energy in him once more. The worst part was never being sure what to do to stop it, but hadn’t they been through this a hundred times before? They’d find a way, or they wouldn’t. Dean felt maybe he could take some satisfaction that most people wouldn’t know the world ending was their fault, but that seemed like cold comfort at best. 

He almost headed to Sam’s room, but it was barely after eleven. He found Sam where he figured he would, at the main command table, with three books stacked up around him. They were really old ones, possibly from the back corner of the library, where you needed a gas mask to handle the level of dust back there. That wasn’t exaggerating either - when he and Sam first saw it, they thought it was weird that they had all the grey books stacked in one section, until they got close enough to see cobwebs had become so rife with dust, it was almost a cloth now. When he first disturbed it, Dean sneezed for the better of an hour and ended up a wheezing snot monster for most of the day. He no longer ventured into that part of the library. “You’ll never guess who called me,” Dean said.

Sam looked up from his book, and barely even thought about it. “Eisenhower?”

Dean frowned at him. “Ramon. You know, from the akepholoi case?”

At least now he had the decency to look interested. “What’s happened? Is he okay?”

He reported what little he had gotten out of him in his hyperactive, near breakdown state. Sam moved the books aside, and pulled out his laptop. “He says people are missing? Where is he, still in Tacoma?”

Dean checked his messages and saw the text from Ramon. “Yep, still in Washington State.”

After some fast typing, Sam said, “I’ve got nothing here on missing people.”

“Yeah, he said the cops weren’t interested. If they aren’t, why would the media be?”

Sam scowled at the screen, then shut the computer. “I guess so. He’s not back on the street, is he?”

Dean shrugged, but the thought had crossed his mind. “Hope not.” They never did learn a lot about Ramon, but they learned just enough to be furious. He’d run away from an abusive step-father, and had taken to sex work to live. Never mind that he was only sixteen, he had enough clients to make something of a living. Dean wanted names, so he could beat the ever-loving fuck out of each one, but he knew better than to ask. Still, he was a kid, and sometimes it was hard to imagine saving a world where shit like that happened. But they got him off the street, got him somewhere safe, and he managed not to go completely insane after seeing the akepheloi, which, in all honesty, Dean didn’t think many people could do. Honestly, he killed them, and he still found it hard to believe that things that absurd looking existed. His brain still kept trying to nope out when he tried to recall them. They were an even split between completely ridiculous and absurdly terrifying. He hoped they never ran into them ever again. 

It was a long drive to Tacoma, but they’d done it before, and had a system. Whoever was the most awake drove first shift, and the other caught some z’s before they switched over about halfway through. In this case, it was Dean taking first shift, as he was keyed up from thinking about those goddamn akepholois again. His mind was just not having them. Mouths on their stomach. Ridiculous. He still didn’t understand where their digestive system was. They never had figured that out, had they? Dean had chopped one into pieces - well, the Mark had - and he still didn’t recall seeing anything that resembled an intestine. Should he be glad about that? He still wasn’t sure.

By the time he swapped driving duties with Sam, Dean was too tired to think about it. But he did end up having a minor nightmare where he went into a bar and found everyone had heads where their torsos should be. It was on the goofy meter, so you could only find it so scary, but it was too weird to really laugh at. 

They hit Tacoma by afternoon, although it was so overcast that you could have mistaken it for early morning. It wasn’t rainy, just gloomy, which was kind of typical for this part of the Pacific Northwest. It didn’t have as much rain as it used to, thanks to global warming, but whether you thought that was good or bad pretty much depended on whether you were from here or not. 

And Dean had forgotten Tacoma’s most notable feature: hills. The streets in the downtown area were ridiculously steep. Kind of like San Francisco, but not quite as sinuous or scenic. No matter how they tried to tart it up like their more gaudy northern sister, Seattle, Tacoma wore its industrial town roots like it had been bolted to the frame. There were only so many ways you could paint a panel you couldn’t get rid of, no matter how much primer you slapped on it. 

The address Ramon had texted Dean led to a tiny suburban enclave within the city itself, where a somewhat Victorian style two-story house sat on a postage stamp sized property, with wildflowers where lawn was usually supposed to be. It was quaint, almost like something out of a fairy tale, until you started up the walk. Then you could see where the paint was starting to peel, and where the termites had been at the foundation. Sort of like a real fairy tale - it got worse the closer you looked at it.

The stairs creaked ominously as they went up, and they had barely knocked when the door was flung open so violently Dean took a step back. Standing there was a woman who was five feet tall at a push, with black hair and deep-set brown eyes, who seemed to visually scan them and dismiss them in the very same second. She gave off the energy of a great aunt who would have no compunction about swatting you on the back of the head if you did something wrong. “You must be them,” she said. 

Sam pulled off a magic trick, by remembering the name of Jody’s friend before he did. “You must be Tia. I’m Sam and this is -“

“Dean, yes. Jody told me about you.” She followed that with a look so frosty, Dean feared he had hypothermia. What the hell had Jody said about them? He tried to imagine if he was her, and his mind instantly settled on  _ “they fuck up a lot but generally mean well” _ . Which ... okay, fair. Still, a bit harsh. 

Tia turned back inside the house, and shouted, “Ramon!” When she turned back to them, she lowered her voice to a serious whisper. “I don’t need the other kids getting upset about this. So you and Ramon keep this conversation outside and to yourselves. Got me?”

“Yes ma’am,” Sam said, with a deferential nod. Dean really didn’t want to know what would happen if they said no. 

“How’s he doing?” Dean asked. 

“Well. And if anything happens to him, I’m holding you responsible. So nothing happens to him, right?”

“Absolutely,” Dean agreed. If this was her good side, he never wanted to see her bad side. 

The door opened wider as Ramon appeared, and stepped out onto the tiny porch. He looked good. When Dean first met him, he was scrawny in a way that suggested he rarely ate, did too much heroin, or both. He’d filled out a bit, seemed solider, his face less hollow. His shaggy black hair was a bit longer now, and his dark eyes seemed a little brighter, all an improvement. He looked like any other teenager - except he was wearing a Sisters of Mercy t-shirt, which Dean knew were an ’80’s Goth band. Was that coming back into fashion again? He would definitely be the last to know. 

As soon as he closed the door behind him, Dean realized Ramon had a folder tucked under his arm. “Maybe we should talk in your car?” Ramon suggested, his voice pitched at a whisper. So Tia must have warned him before they arrived. 

They decamped to the Impala, them in the front and Ramon in the back, and that’s when he showed them the contents of the folder. “So I’ve been working with a group trying to help street kids, and during that time, I’ve met a lot of the homeless. Which is why I noticed when they started to go missing.” He handed him and Sam pages from his file, and they were amazing. They were detailed notes on when and where he encountered said people, some with photos. It was like his work diary, and Dean was impressed. 

Sam sighed. “But the homeless are a naturally -“

”- transient population?” Ramon interrupted, with a lot more confidence than he had back in Sioux Falls. This made Dean actually pleased. He learned that the world was full of monsters - more than just your average human variety - and he turned it into action. Good for him. “Yeah, the cops told me the same thing. Have you ever been homeless?”

“No,” Sam admitted.

Dean almost interjected technically no, but there were times Dean felt like they were maybe two or three inches from that. There were so many times when Dad was gone longer than he thought, and food and cash ran out, and Dean had almost no ideas how he was keeping them fed for however long Dad was gone. It was extreme poverty, not homelessness, but they lived in adjacent neighborhoods. Still, he was glad Sam still didn’t know how tough some of those days were. “I was, and let me tell you, we homeless are really possessive of our things. Because we never have many, and it feels like we’re still connected to society. A lot of the time, what little we have are meds, or reminders of our old life. In other words, the homeless can wander, they can be run out of an area, but unless the cops trash all their stuff, they’re taking their things with them. Joe left without his things. So did Mercer, and Maggie left her whole goddamn tent, which, let me tell you, isn’t ever going to happen. Do you know how hard those are to get?”

While he said this, Ramon handed them printed out photos of the areas in question. Maggie’s tent seemed particularly heartbreaking, as he’d taken a photo of the inside and the exterior. For some reason, Mercer’s spot, which looked like the corner of an alley, caught Dean’s eye. What did he see? He studied the photo, shifting angles. 

Sam sighed. “This is heartbreaking, and I believe you, but do you have proof of something supernatural going on here?”

“I think I found something,” Dean said, finally figuring it out. He showed Sam the Mercer photo again, with his finger next to it. 

Because this was in an alley by a Dumpster, there was quite a bit of detritus around. But next to Mercer’s nest of blankets, there was a small object. Could have been garbage, but there was no way in hell it was. 

Sam took the paper, and brought it closer to his face. “What am I miss- oh.”

Ramon leaned over the seat. “What? Did I get something?”

Dean pointed it out. “This small velvet bag. I don’t suppose Mercer was known for that, was he?”

“No. I mean, I assumed it was something he picked up somewhere, but I didn’t really think about it. Except it smelled bad, like burned hair and rust. What is it?”

Ramon describing the smell confirmed it. It was funny how much rust could smell like blood, and vice versa. Nothing smelled like burning hair except burning hair, which Dean knew down to his marrow. If he thought about it too long, he could feel his gorge rising up his throat, so he tried not to. “It’s a hex bag.”

Ramon looked between them, not skeptical, but somewhat confused. “A what?”

“It’s a thing witches use sometimes, to do shitty things to people,” Dean said. He felt that was a good general synopsis.

“Witches?” Ramon repeated. He looked between them with narrowed eyes, like he didn’t trust them. “You’re shitting me, right? Witches aren’t a thing.”

“Sorry kiddo,” Dean said, holding the papers out to him. “They’re real, and they’re fucking disgusting.”

“Why would a witch target homeless people?” Sam asked him. “How does that make sense?”

Dean shrugged. “Could it have been personal? Maybe she - or he - knew this guy once, and held a grudge?”

“Hold it,” Ramon insisted. All suspicious was gone. He now looked wide-eyed and a little pale, kind of like he looked when he first saw the akephaloi. To be honest, Dean had probably looked a bit like that too back then. Goddamn abominations. “Does this mean magic is real?”

Sam sighed, his shoulders slumping. Yes, this was one of those things they were tired of telling civilians. “Yes, but it’s not exactly Harry Potter. It’s ... complicated.”

“It’s built by rituals and intent,” Dean continued. “You need to have the right ingredients and spells to pull off what you want to do. And some really big magic has a big cost. It’s a lifestyle, not a hobby.”

“So everybody who says they’re Wiccan is actually a real witch?”

Sam shook his head. “No, that’s a belief system, and that’s different.” He suddenly frowned, and looked at Dean. “Have we ever met a witch who claimed to be a Wiccan?”

Dean opened his mouth to respond, and paused, as he suddenly realized what a deep question that was. They’d encountered so many witches in their lives. He glanced out the windshield as he considered that, rifling through his mental hunter’s journal. “No, I don’t think so. Wow. Why had that never occurred to me?”

Sam shrugged, as clearly it hadn’t occurred to him either. It was amazing what you could miss when you were starting or stopping apocalypses all the time. Sometimes, on a really bad day, both at once. 

“So, can they magic someone out of existence?” Ramon asked. His brow was furrowed in concern, and somehow that made him look slightly younger. 

“Technically no,” Sam said, and he rushed to the next sentence, probably because he didn’t want to explain that technically part. “But it seems unlikely a witch would expend so much energy regardless.”

“You mean especially on a homeless person, ‘cause society ignores them?” As soon as Ramon said it, he seemed to regret it. “I’m sorry, that’s not aimed at you. I think I’m disgusted with society.”

“I get it man,” Dean said. “It sucks. But you’re doing your best to change it, and that means a lot.” It did, even though it was fighting against a flood with a teaspoon. But still, wasn’t that their fight against evil? Same thing. It would probably wipe them out in the end, but the fight had to be worth something. Dean honestly had to believe that, or he would have nothing. 

He noticed Sam giving him a funny look, and Dean decided to ignore him. He caught Ramon’s eye in the rearview mirror, and said, “Should we go to the last place you heard from Zack?”

Ramon nodded. “Might as well.”

It wasn’t far away, just a few blocks over. It was a main street, but in an area that had seen better days. There was a closed down gas station and mini-mart at the head of the block, which was one of the rarest things ever. You hardly ever saw those places shut down and abandoned, but it was a good sign something terrible had happened. Whether it was personal bankruptcy or an economic downtown, it seemed like the urban equivalent of bad mojo. 

About halfway down the block, there was a cut through alley, wide enough for a car, and open on one side due to a chain-link fence in the vacant lot beside it. While it looked safe and clear in the daytime, Dean wondered how it was at night. He looked around for streetlamps and saw they were only at the head and the base of the block. Shit. That was a good murdering alley right there. A sinkhole for light and people to escape into. Dean headed straight for it. 

The alley was fairly clean, which was also a suspicious note. There were a couple of small trash cans, no Dumpsters, and they looked weirdly prim in this setting. It was hard to look at everything while he walked the alley, but he did so, concentrating on what he was seeing, and barely aware of the conversation Sam and Ramon were having. Ramon was saying he didn’t think Zack would come this way, as he thought this place was kind of creepy. That was A plus awareness from Zack, so what got him?

At first, Dean thought it was flecks of mica in the asphalt, but no, this place was too cheap looking to have had that kind of mixture. He hunkered down to touch the faint glitter dust, and realized almost immediately it was pulverized metal. 

It was close to one of the metal posts for the chain-link fence, and a couple of extremely stubborn dandelions were sprouting through the asphalt regardless. It was in that tiny nest of grass that Dean found shards of plastic. It was black on one side, and the other held some kind of prismatic sticker. 

“Found something?” Sam asked. 

Dean held the pieces out towards Ramon when he joined them. “This his phone?”

Ramon took the pieces, and his eyes widened in horror when he saw the sticker. He didn’t need to verbally confirm it, but he did. “Yes, this ... what the fuck happened to his phone?”

Dean suppressed the urge to say he think it exploded, because the fact that all that was left of it was metal dust and plastic shrapnel made it pretty clear whatever occurred was extremely violent. At least it was probably fast, right? Even if true, still cold comfort. “Nothing good.”

"Dean,” Sam whispered, trying to catch his attention without alerting Ramon. He jerked his head over to the fence, and Dean didn’t have to look very long before he saw what he noticed. There were specks of reddish-brown on the fencepost, and probably overall, but chain link left that difficult to say. But there was no mistaking that was dried blood. And the more he was down here, the more he smelled something like rust. 

Ramon looked distressed, and who could blame him? He glanced at the plastic in his hand, and scanned the alley, like Zack might reappear at any moment. But he wouldn’t, unless he was a ghost, and Dean really hoped that didn’t happen. Ramon was still new to the supernatural world, and at a certain point, explaining everything got tedious. “Why would witches do this?” Ramon wondered. He looked between them for help, for answers, and Dean knew they couldn’t offer him much of either right now. “What’s the point?”

Dean was wondering the same thing himself. But that was what they were here to find out, right? 


	2. East of Eden

_** 2 - East of Eden ** _

To say this was a tough case was kind of an understatement. So they had confirmation that at least two of the missing had come to some violent, supernatural end. But why? And also, were the others missing for the same reason? Could they prove it? Who was their main suspect? 

This is why being an actual detective must have sucked. Where did you even start? Add to that the fact that the homeless and street kids in general were super suspicious of newcomers, since they were such an abused underclass, and this seemed like an impossible problem. Dean was tempted to make a Kobayashi Maru joke, but was equally afraid that no one would get it, or they would get it and think he was a giant nerd. In itself, the reference was a Kobayashi Maru, and he quietly appreciated the irony. 

But something did occur to him, while he and Sam were contemplating their next step. “Hey, didn’t Dad know a real psychic in Tacoma?”

Sam gave him a look that was best described as baffling. “He did?”

Oh. Was this one of those things Dad kept from Sam while he was on the yellow-eyed demon hunt? To be fair, he kept it from Dean too, at least until the day he died, but in retrospect, Dean had put some pieces together. As far as Dean could discern, he must have figured out Sam was tainted with demon blood when Sammy was what, twelve maybe? And spent that time from then onward trying to find a cure or some kind of fix for the condition. He was never successful. It also explained why Dad trained him so hard. He always asked him and Dad never gave him a real reason, and Dean figured the answer was he wasn’t good enough. Looking back, Dad was trying to prepare him for killing his own brother if he had to, which ... well, Dean had no words for how fucked up that was. But at least he had some inkling of why he was as fucked up as he was. Thanks Dad. “Yeah. I guess you didn’t meet her. Her name was something like ... Shirazi? Hirani?”

“Shirani? The psychic who works on 13 th and Evers?” Ramon asked. “Also, psychics are real?”

“Very few,” Sam said. “Real ones rarely advertise.”

“Except Shirani, apparently.” Dean was kind of surprised she was still alive. But it spoke well of her forecasting abilities. 

A quick search turned up her number, and Dean called it. He got nothing but a very straightforward voice mail message. “Hey, Shirani. This is Dean Winchester, John Winchester’s son? I know it’s a long shot, but we have a case that could use some insight. Call me back when you can.” If she’d even bother. Dad didn’t always end his friendships on the best of terms, and maybe they’d never been friends. Maybe it was a purely transactional hunter business relationship. He supposed he’d get an answer, depending on whether she responded or not. 

In lieu of that, they still had to find some angle to work on. Luckily, he and Sam skipped the FBI drag and were dressed in their normal clothes, so they could attempt to talk to the homeless without scaring them off. That still might not be possible, but having Ramon with them, someone they knew, had to help.

Ramon took them to a public park that was really a large lot with trees and outdoor equipment for kids, and a couple of benches scattered around. It was too humble for the park designation, but who was he supposed to complain to about that? There were a line of tents in what might pass for the rear of the park, and while Ramon was given a friendly greeting, absolutely everyone gave them frosty glares. Which, again, fair. Ramon’s cover story for them was they were part of a team doing a survey of the homeless for the county, which was apparently a thing that occasionally happened. The homeless remained unimpressed.

After general introductions, and some attempt by Ramon to get them in with this group, Ramon went off to have private conversations with some of them, in the hopes of ferreting out some genuine information without them around. Ramon had left them in the company of a guy simply called Sarge. He was maybe in his early forties, somewhat gaunt and with a pronounced limp. He wore an army jacket that not only looked like the real thing, but had patches and insignia that suggested he really had been a Seargent. Was he a veteran? Oh boy, did that piss Dean off. Sarge looked at them with hard grey eyes, and after a moment, asked, “Who are you really?”

“We’re with the county -” Sam began.

Sarge didn’t let him get any further. “No, you’re not. Your hair’s too long, and he’s too pretty. But that means you’re also not cops, unless you’re the undercover narc variety. So who the fuck are you?”

Dean and Sam exchanged a look, as they had been rumbled, and there was no getting around that. Dean also briefly wondered if he should be offended by the pretty comment, but pressed on. “Okay. We’re private detect -“

“No,” Sarge said again. He crossed his arms over his chest, and Dean caught the scent of cigarettes and whiskey. Again, didn’t blame him. 

“We’re monster hunters,” Dean said, deciding the truth was worth a shot.

His flinty eyes scudded between them for a moment, before he said, “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Is that why you smell like gun oil?”

Wow. Dean didn’t think anyone could pick that up. Dad had drilled into him that many monsters had strong senses of smell, so he had to be careful about that too. “Yeah. I don’t use them on humans.”

“Okay. So what monster are you after?”

Sam still seemed unsettled by the ease of Sarge’s acceptance, but he rolled with it. “Right now, we’re thinking witches played a roll in the disappearance of Mercer and Zack.”

He made a sort of hmmph noise. “They look human?”

“Yes,” Sam replied. 

“Have you seen anyone around who doesn’t belong, or seems a bit questionable?” Dean continued.

“Besides you two?” he smiled faintly at his own joke, but only for a moment. “There have been some of the rich guy’s guys, stirring up shit and letting us know we’ll be evicted, but that’s about it. There’s no shortage of sketchy people out here.”

“The rich guy’s guys?” Sam repeated. 

“Yeah, haircut. The yuppie bastard.” At their blank looks, Sarge turned and shouted towards a nearby blue and brown tent, “Ace, you got yesterday’s paper?”

There was no reply, but a folded, crumpled paper came flying out of the tent's opening, landing near Sarge’s boots. He picked it up, and shed pages until he found what he wanted, and showed it to the both of them. 

It was a half-page ad, showing a blandly handsome man in a fancy suit, smiling like he had a bridge to sell you, over a block of text talking about how he was going to make Tacoma better for everyone. He was identified as Davis Miller, CEO of LunaCorps. It was unclear what LunaCorps was. A construction business? Software? “Well, this guy is clearly full of shit,” Dean said. Sarge was right to call him haircut. It was a standard Wall Street guy sort of cut, but it always had an insane thousand dollar price tag or something. Dean never trusted anyone who was willing to fork out thousands of dollars for a cut that looked like you could do it yourself in a hotel room at five in the morning. 

Sarge let out an amused grunt. “He really is. If he ever showed his candy ass down here I’d kick his fucking teeth in.”

“So he doesn’t come down here?” Sam asked.

Sarge’s look was cutting. “Fuck no. Since when do guys like this do anything? I don’t even know if he’s in the state.”

Well, damn. Dean was hoping to visit this guy. No, he probably wasn’t a witch, but he would have loved fucking with this guy until security tossed them out. Maybe key his car on the way. Sure, it would probably be a minor inconvenience at best, but anything to upset these jumped up jackholes. “But he has people come here?” Sam continued.

Sarge dropped the paper and shrugged. “Actually, I dunno. They claim to work for LunaCorp, but anybody could do that. Some of them snot-nosed asshats don’t look old enough to even be interns.”

Dean’s phone hummed in his pocket, and he took it out to see another unknown number, but with a local area code. “Yeah?”

“Come now, come alone,” a woman whispered, before hanging up the phone. What the fuck ..? But he quickly checked, and yep, that was Shirani calling him back. 

“Uh, I have to go,” Dean said to Sam. “You got this?”

The look Sam gave him screamed not only did he not have this, but he would kick Dean’s ass if he left. But Dean patted him on the shoulder, and said, “You’ll be fine.”

Dean decided to walk there, since it was only a few blocks over according to Ramon, but Dean had once again forgotten about the hills. He wasn’t walking up them, no, but still walking down sidewalks that were ridiculously steep was super weird. The gravity of it made you feel like, if you just leaned over a little more, you’d go tumbling down like a snowball on a mountainside. It was deeply unsettling, kind of like everything had been since they arrived. Every now and again, when he was at just the right spot, he caught a glimpse of liquid silver, which was the struggling sun reflecting off Commencement Bay. It was easy to forget there was a major body of water around here, save for the fact that it explained the abundance of seagulls. 

It turned out half of the businesses on 13 th and Evers were shut down, but right next to a closed down chain sandwich shop was a tiny storefront advertising  _ Readings by Madame Shirani _ . There was a deliberately retro-chic painting of a palm with an eye in its center, tacky as hell, but right in the bottom left corner, as tiny as could be managed, was a hunter’s symbol. So as much as this seemed like a gaudy storefront, she had some hunting bona fides. 

Chimes sounded as he walked in, and he was hit with the heady perfume of incense. “Hello?” It looked exactly like a tacky fortune teller’s front room, with a tiny round table covered with gauzy fabric, a velvet loveseat against the far wall, and a beaded curtain separating the front from the back. Small shelves held crystals and bottles of essential oils, along with various other New Age-y style stuff. Dean wouldn’t have been surprised if that’s where most of the income came from. 

“Flip the closed sign on the door,” a woman called out. 

Dean did, and wandered towards the table. By the time he reached it, the beads clacked, and Shirani appeared. She was average height, with brown skin and glossy black hair she’d done in a very tight braid. She had to be in her late fifties or early sixties by now, but she looked damn good for it. Incongruously, she wore jeans and a t-shirt advertising a cat cafe. “How many times have you died, boy?” she asked.

Of all the things he thought she’d say, that was nowhere on the list. “Uh ... is that a serious question? ‘Cause I think I’ve lost count ...”

She frowned at him and shook her head. “You drag this aura around with you, all blue and black, like the world’s biggest bruise. I always knew you were cursed, but I couldn’t have guessed how cursed. Congratulations on staying sane. Ish.” And with that, she sat down at the table, and seemingly pulled a pack of Tarot cards out of nowhere. 

Again, was he supposed to be offended by that? The sane-ish part. He always knew he was cursed. “Uh, so ... do you know why I’m here?”

She didn’t verbally answer, simply stabbed the table with her finger, indicating he should sit down. He did, still uncertain about her and everything. Shirani started dealing out Tarot cards.

Dean had seen many Tarot cards in his life, and knew their basic symbology. There were lots of card designs and styles, but Shirani had cards he had never seen before. The first one was a skeletal deer with a huge rack of antlers, somehow still walking in a desolate landscape. Next was a man on fire, standing like he wasn’t. The third card was a severed hand impaled with a knife through its palm. The fourth was a skull with a rose in its teeth, and a crown on its head. The fifth card was a seated woman with an exposed ribcage, and a raven coming out from beneath her exposed collarbone. “What the hell are these?”

“My personal deck,” she said, setting the rest of the cards aside. She studied them, which didn’t resemble a reading style he was familiar with, and clicked her tongue. “Well, goddamn it. You have a gift for diving headfirst into shit, don’t you?”

“I think that’s the Winchester curse.”

  
“No, the Winchester curse is sitting on emotions until they kill you. You really should tell that angel what he means to you. You seriously wouldn’t be here without him.” She tapped the severed hand card with a sharp nail. “There’s evil here. I guess that’s what brought you, yes?”

“Yes.” He didn’t know what to do with the angel comments, so he shoved that aside. “Can you tell us why witches would be hunting down homeless people?”

She looked up at him, and he noticed her eyes, which were so deep brown they were almost black, were gorgeous. But also, kind of terrifying. “It’s not only witches.”

“What else is involved?”

She frowned down at the cards, as if expecting them to respond. She drew another card from the deck, and threw it down on top of the severed hand card. It was a river of what looked like tar or oil, something thick and black, pouring down on an overturned bowl, which was still too small to hold the deluge in either case. “Oh, I don’t like this.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t look great. What is that, exactly?”

“Right now, you’re standing on a ledge. But it’s not a ledge. It’s a building, but you haven’t turned around to see it.”

Dean nodded, like that made any goddamn sense at all. “I don’t suppose you can put that in English, huh?”

Her look was so sharp, he could almost feel the burn of the cut across his face. “You are stupid lucky. You’re going to need it now. If you have friends, call them.”

“Most of our friends are dead. Could you at least tell me what’s the main coven around these parts?”

”It’s not a coven. I’m not sure what it is.” She picked up the skeletal deer card and frowned at it like it insulted her mother. “Normally I’d tell you to run, but you’re not the type.” She looked at him sharply, like she just recalled something. “Is your brother still tainted by demon blood?”

That caught him off guard. What did she mean by that? “No, I don’t think so.”

“Too bad. You could have used it.”

“Used it how?”

She scowled at him. “He had powers. For the longest time, John insisted Sammy had no powers. Powers was a freak thing, and his boy was not a freak.” Shirani gathered up the cards, pushing them back into an even pile. “I told him he couldn’t be cured, and it would never be that simple. He refused to believe me.”

Dean couldn’t help but ask, “Did he ever mention me?”

“No.” Dean wished he wasn’t disappointed, but he kind of was. No, of course not, why ever mention him? He wasn’t important. Shirani shuffled the cards back into the deck. “But I always knew you’d be fine. A bit broken, sure, but fine. You were always stronger than him.”

Dean scoffed. “Than Dad? No I wasn’t.”

“In every way that mattered, you were. Maybe he realized that at the end.” She slipped her cards into a black silk bag, which she then tucked under the table. Did she have a hidden card holster? Odd choice, but okay. “I'll see what I can do. It’s probably not enough. Just keep your eyes open. You’re already in danger by being here. You have been noticed.”

That didn't sound good. “By the witches or whatever?”

“Yes, the whatevers. You won’t get much warning.” 

Dean honestly knew better than to say something snarky to a psychic, or a woman clearly not afraid to kick his ass, but it slipped out. “Could you vague that up a little more?”

She gave him a glare like a punch. It could have put a hole straight through the wall. “Not all psychics are the same, you know. Some get flashes, images, some talk to the dead. I’ve always been a strange one. I get abstract images - like my cards - and very powerful feelings. It took me a while to figure out it was clairvoyance, not a mood disorder. So, you want the undiluted truth about what’s going on? Doom. The kind that makes your stomach shrivel up into nothing. A feeling like everything has died, and it’s your fault.”

Was that a reference to the Mark/Darkness thing? Dean tried not to show it on his face, but he felt that all the way to his marrow. He opened his mouth, ready to apologize, but she instantly waved a dismissive hand at him. “I don’t care, Winchester. Fix this thing, because I am too old and tired for this shit.” 

He knew an order when he heard one. “Yes ma’am.” Okay, she hadn’t been super helpful, although knowing an attack was probably eminent was a good thing. Still, if it was witches, what could they do beyond make some extremely protective hex bags and hope they held out until they could deploy the witch killing bullets? It was too much to hope they were stupid, but they might be cocky, which was the same thing in a battle situation. 

“Oh, and try not to die again,” she called after him. He was halfway out the door, and turned back to look at her. “Even Death is fed up with you.”

Dean smiled, but it was faint and far too self-aware. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Honestly, the list of things fed up with him could fill up a skyscraper. And he would be at number one.


	3. Six of Swords

_** 3 - Six of Swords ** _

Sam vowed to one day just leave Dean high and dry while talking to people. Leave him to do things all by himself. He figured, if Dean was really lucky, it might not end in a shoot out. Or, knowing Dean, a date. 

Although, in all honesty, he didn’t blame him for ducking out. This was fucking heartbreaking, None of these people should have been out here. They should have been indoors, somewhere safe, not abandoned like garbage at the side of the road. Add to that general indignity that they were being killed off by witches with no one the wiser, and it was a hell of a lot. He had to pretend to be dispassionate, but in all honesty, Sam wanted to punch something. Many somethings. A whole coven’s worth, in fact. 

Sarge was easy to talk to, considering everyone else that followed. Okay, he accepted the monster hunter thing way too easily, but it was more than possible he’d actually run into a monster or two in his life. The same could have been true of the others, but for the most part, he couldn’t get them to engage. He was an interloper, far too new around here to trust. 

The sun had broken through my butt layer, and it seemed humid and stuffy. He was contemplating getting rid of his coat for now when he felt ... something. It was eyes on him, someone staring. He looked around, as the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Someone was openly glaring at him, and yet, he couldn’t see a single person doing that. 

Sam had the weird, irrational idea that it was the witch. He tried to dismiss it, but couldn’t. No one he could see was even looking in his direction.

And the feeling simply stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Despite the heat, he felt a chill of horror. That was a billion kinds of wrong. He was about to call Dean and warn him they might be in for something when Ramon returned. “You okay?” he asked.

Sam wondered how much of it showed on his face. “Yeah, fine. Did you get anyone to talk?”

“Actually yeah. Birdie talked to Mercer the day before he went missing, and he told her that a fancy blonde lady gave him a good luck charm.”

That settled in his stomach like concrete. “The hex bag?”

Ramon nodded. “I think so. I wish I had more of a description of the woman, but according to her, that was all he said.”

“It is pretty vague. But why fancy?”

Ramon shook his head and shrugged. “I dunno. I’m gonna guess she looked like she had money.” Ramon glanced around nervously. “So what’s our next move?”

“I think you’d better leave that part to Dean and me. You’re too involved in this as it is.”

Ramon frowned, and it made him look ridiculously young. He was eighteen, right? He wasn’t a seventeen-year-old flirting with the notice of killer witches, was he? “Hell yeah I’m involved. I know you guys are the experts and all that, but I’m not leaving. I’ve been through some shit, okay? Don’t worry about me. I’ll duck behind you guys if things get weird.”

“Impossible. Look, this might -“

Dean reappeared, a sweating, huffing mess that collapsed on the nearest bench. Sam and Ramon both stared at him, not sure what to make of this. “Does he have asthma?” Ramon asked.

“I forgot ... I was walking back .. uphill,” Dean gasped, still trying to catch his breath. “Fuck me, these hills.”

Sam had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “Maybe you need to work out some more ... “

“Shut up,” Dean snapped. He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and seemed to get his breathing under control, although he was still flushed, and ridiculously sweaty. He brought out his flask, and looked to drink about half of it in one go. Not very hydrating, but he’d had this argument with Dean already, and once was more than enough. 

After a moment, when Sam confirmed no one was close enough to hear them, both he and Dean said, “They know we’re here.” They then shared a puzzled stare, and Sam imagined they were thinking the same thing - how does he know?

Ramon looked between, eyes wide in confusion. “What just happened?”

“Shirani confirmed it,” Dean said, deciding not to answer that question. “We’re next for the chop.”

“Yeah I got this feeling,” Sam said. If forced to explain it later, he’d try, but not right now, and certainly not in front of the kid. “Which means we have to get Ramon home and figure out a place to fortify.”

“What? No, I’m not going home. I told you, I’ve been through some shit. Hell, I’ve been bitten by a vampire, right?”

Dean was finally on his feet again. He'd stopped panting too, which was always a plus. “Okay, sure, that happened, and you shot a few akephaloi. But this is completely different. How good are you at fighting things you can’t see?”

“What? Witches are invisible?”

“Witches don’t need to be in the room to kill you,” Dean said. “Hex bags, remember? Spells. We’ve lived long enough to have a few tricks, but witches are the fucking worst, and we’re not having you killed as collateral damage. Besides, if the witch knows we’re here, she might have seen you too. What if she attacks Tia’s place?”

Horror bloomed across Ramon’s face. “What? She wouldn’t ... would she?”

“She clearly has no compunctions about killing anyone. It’s hard to imagine a few kids would matter.” Sam said. He hated scaring Ramon like this, but Dean was right - they had no reason to believe she’d give a shit about a group of kids. In fact, past experience would lead him to think she’d enjoy killing them. 

“We can give you some things,” Dean continued. “But you’re gonna need to stay there and keep an eye out. If anything seems weird, call us ASAP.”

“Do I need to put down salt or whatever?”

“Salt is for ghosts and demons, “Sam said. “It has no effect on witches.”

Ramon clearly didn’t like any of this. But who did? “How do you keep this stuff straight?”

Dean shrugged. “When your life depends on it, you learn pretty fast.”

Truer words were never spoken.

Back at the car, Dean started putting together some protective hex bags, while Sam showed Ramon how to draw a witch trap. Its efficacy was a little limited here, but if they attempted to come into the house, they would be stuck. As it turned out, Ramon was a pretty good artist. Just for the hell of it, Sam also taught him the demon trap symbol, because that could come in handy someday. Sam actually hoped that Ramon would walk away from the weird stuff and try and have a normal life. Sam wasn’t completely sure why, but it broke his heart to think Ramon would become another hunter. But he was halfway there, wasn’t he? You couldn’t make other people’s life choices for them, no matter how much you wanted to. 

They dropped Ramon off at the house, and just to make themselves feel better, did a search around the outside of the house. Breaching the place unnoticed would be difficult, especially with Tia around, so putting stuff on the outside would be easiest. They didn’t find anything, but still didn’t feel great about any of this. 

In Tacoma, you pretty much had two choices for rooms: fancy hotel, or fleabag motel. They went for fleabag, because of course they would, but also, if there was going to be a witch fight, sleazier places were much slower to call the police in the event of violence. 

They had hex bags and witch killing bullets, but if she attacked via spell alone, they could be well and truly fucked. So Sam did a deep dive into the men of letters database on his laptop, and found something he thought could help. “Why don’t I try a spell?” Sam said. 

Dean, drawing a witch trap on the floor in front of the door, didn’t even look away from his work. “I know you can do a lot of things, Sam, but I don’t think you can out magic a witch.”

“I can’t,” he agreed. “But I’m not going to try. I’m going to do a spell called ‘reveal the face of the enemy’.”

Dean finally looked back at him, and Sam swiveled the laptop screen in his direction. “It’s pretty simple, actually. Witchcraft 101. And I think we have all the ingredients we need for it in the trunk.” Well, that and a blood sample, but the good spells always required blood.

Dean came over to have a closer look, as Sam explained, “It will give us the name and face of the witch intending to attack us, so we can attack her first.”

Dean smiled. It was tried and true strategy - someone coming after you? Go after them first. Sometimes you got the element of surprise, sometimes not, but it was always an advantage to have the opponent on the back foot. Sam knew he would like it. “Let’s do it.”

They gathered the ingredients from the trunk, and because he needed a basin, Sam decided to simply use the bathroom sink. That way they could rinse away all elements of it afterward, a tiny kindness to the cleaning staff. 

To say it smelled terrible before he cut his finger and added blood to the mixture was an understatement. Why didn’t spells like this have good smelling herbs, like sage or lavender? Why was it always small animal bones, grave dirt, and hair? Yes, it was a minor quibble considering, but it still sucked.

For several moments after reciting the spell, it seemed like he did it wrong because nothing happened, and Sam began to wonder if he skipped something. Dean seemed to notice as well, because he asked, “Anyt -“

It slammed into Sam’s brain like his visions used to - like someone wearing a metal glove decided to punch his skull as hard as they could. He swore he almost felt his brain slosh over towards his left ear, ready to leak out. But he saw her as clear as day - a pretty young blonde woman, sort of anonymous in her way, and a name branded itself across his cerebellum. “Katie McClane,” Sam said, pressing a hand to his forehead, trying to keep his brain from exploding out like a chest-burster. 

“Really?” Dean replied. “How white bread.” 

  
“If it’s anything, I don’t think it’s her real name, just the one she’s using.” Witches could shed appearance, age, and identity at will. Which was why the good ones were often hard to find. Rowena was kind of an exception, holding her name and appearance, but she was so powerful, she could risk it. He also knew they were not on the best of terms, but he wondered if he could text Rowena Katie’s name, see if she knew her. If they were really lucky, she could have been a witch Rowena hated, and would take her out before they could. 

Sam opened his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror, expecting to see his nose bleeding like it used to. But nope, not this time. It just felt like one of his old visions - it wasn’t one. Simply a spell with a hell of a kick.

“You okay?” Dean asked, sounding genuinely concerned. 

“Yeah. Just fought me a bit.”

Dean seemed dubious, but he let him have it. “Okay, let’s lock and load. We have a witch to burn.” 

Sam winced at the turn of phrase. Dean knew as well as he did, no witch burners ever burned witches, but regular people, stigmatize or villainized for one reason or another. It was hard to imagine an even incompetent witch getting caught and trapped by random civilians. 

Sam took a moment to lean against the sink and let his head stop ringing, and he only chanced walking when he was about fifty percent sure he wouldn’t fall over. He managed to reach the doorway, and figured he could go the rest of the way on his own. Would have been nice if the spell included the addendum ‘feels like getting roundhoused by Mike Tyson’. Maybe he’d add that. 

Dean was probably taking way too many weapons, but that’s what he did. Sam grabbed his laptop, and Googled Katie McClane in the Tacoma /Seattle area. There were quite a few, which he expected, but he narrowed it down by finding an otherwise private Facebook page with a photo of the woman he had seen in his brain. “She lives in Seattle,” he reported. Sam’s eyesight was still a little blurry, but it was clearing up. 

“Of course she does,” Dean said. “She just comes down to Tacoma to kill homeless people. Goddamn -” Whatever he intended to say was cut off with a cough.

Sam shut his laptop and stood, not even wobbling this time. Only when he was holstering his gun did he realize Dean was still coughing. “Dude, you okay?”

Dean put a hand on the wall, holding himself up, as he leaned over and threw up. But it wasn’t vomit that came out of him.

It was blood, a shocking bright crimson, with some metallic glints in it. A slightly closer look confirmed Sam’s fear - it was needles. A dozen or so, shiny silver, good for delicate fabrics. 

Dean looked at the small puddle wide-eyed, blood still dribbling down his chin.

They were too late. Katie had already found them. 


	4. Annihilator

_** 4 - Annihilator ** _

Sam could only hope that Katie came here to kill them herself, and that was confirmed as the door to their motel room blew open, and sent both of them flying. Sam was thrown back into the bathroom door, which knocked the wind out of him before he hit the cheap tile floor. “Oh God, I’m embarrassed for you,” she said, and he smelled carpet burning as she set the witch trap on fire. “I mean, I’ve heard you’re a bit of a let down now, but this sucks guys.”

Dean had been thrown back against the bed, and even though he was still coughing up blood, he aimed a gun in her direction. But with a harshly spat word, the gun flew out of his hand. “Oh please. The only reason you’re still alive is because I want to capture you dying slow for my insta. Do you really think you’re working with an amateur here?”

Sam could feel something going on inside him. His chest felt like it was contracting, like the weight of the Impala was sitting on his torso and crushing his ribcage. He probably only had time until his lungs were punctured to do something. Sam tried to swallow the pain as he reached for his gun, but it was like he had a thousand fire ants marching under his skin, and every movement was agony. Katie was good and sadistic, you had to give her that. 

She was pretty in a bland, Stepford Wife sort of way, perhaps Reese Witherspoon’s cousin twice removed. She also was wearing a blue silk blouse and dark pants that could have been silk as well. No wonder Mercer called her fancy. That didn’t even take into account the incongruous diamond jewelry she wore. In this part of town, she would have been mugged in about ten minutes, but that’s where being a killer witch probably came in real handy. 

It looked like Katie had forgotten him and was personally taunting Dean, which gave him an idea. If it would work. Sam was starting to see black spots exploding before his eyes, and knew he was down to time here. Now or never. And since he was dying anyway, he had nothing to lose.  


He took aim as best he could, and fired. Not only was his vision getting blurry again, but she was at an odd angle to the bathroom, so he missed her by what? Sam figured a country mile would probably cover it. 

She turned towards him, blue eyes wide with fury, and it felt like an invisible biker wearing steel-toed boots kicked the gun out of his hand. “Oh, you think I forgot you, motherfucker?” She stomped over to him, and he realized she was wearing the type of stiletto-heeled footwear that looked super uncomfortable and was probably so expensive that saying the price out loud would make him laugh at its sheer ridiculousness. Nothing but the best for Katie. 

The vice grip on his chest was so tight he had no idea how his entire ribcage hadn’t been pulverized to dust yet. Those spots in his vision were now throbbing with his heartbeat, and Sam suddenly wondered when he last took a breath. Could he even breathe anymore? “I felt that little spell you tried, ” Katie snapped, leaning down over him. “I’ll have you know that’s cultural appropriation. You’re no witch, and you’ll never be one. And I’d tell you to keep your grimy mitts off our stuff, but you’re about to be a corpse, so why bother?”

“Fuck you,” Sam gasped, pretty sure he just used the last of his air. It was little more than a ghastly whisper. 

Katie still heard it, and her brightly painted upper lip curved into a snarl. “You really want those as your last words, you jumped up lit -“

Blood exploded out of her chest as a witch killing bullet ripped through her, hitting almost perfect center mass. Sam felt some of the blood splatter on his face, but more importantly, he could breathe again. He took in a loud gasp of air as the pain in his chest was now gone. Katie swung back around, the bones in her torso actually visible through the apple-sized hole in her back, and Dean said, in a deep raspy voice, “So those are your last words, huh?”

She said nothing, as she was already dead. Her body started falling towards Sam, but he kicked her, and she slammed into the doorframe before collapsing to the floor. He should feel bad about that, but since she had been trying to murder him, he didn’t. 

“Thank God for villains who monologue,” Dean said. His voice sounded terrible, like the needles had ripped up his throat, and Sam wondered if that would heal itself magically since the spell wasn’t hitting him anymore. He guessed they’d find out shortly.

As for Sam, he made himself take deep, slow breaths, so he didn’t hyperventilate. Suffocation was so much fun. He really wished he wasn't so well versed in it. “And those stupid enough to turn their backs on a Winchester.” Sam had been counting on Dean to do his thing and kill her before she killed him. Always a gamble, but it usually paid off. 

  
He sat up slowly, his head only swimming for a second, the spots in front of his eyes fading away. Katie was pretty goddamn powerful, which led him to wonder why she was killing homeless people in Tacoma. Wouldn’t she see that as beneath her? But it was hard to say, since she didn’t live long enough for him to get a good grasp on her personality. Except gloating sadist, but that could cover all witches. And demons. And vampires. Okay, that covered easily half of the supernatural world, and the human one as well. 

Sam saw that Dean had crawled to a slightly better position for a kill shot on Katie, and as a result had left a snail trail of blood behind him on the now permanently discolored beige rug. He was still face down on the carpet, his back up gun in his outstretched hand. He was still breathing, but in no hurry to try and stand yet. Sam couldn’t even imagine what that small journey took out of him. 

Sam used the sink to help himself stand up, his limbs still a little shaky from the whole spell/asphyxiation one-two punch. Now that he was standing, the chemical smell of the smoldering carpet was not only unpleasant but overwhelming. Sorry for the motel, as they would probably never get the smell out of this room. He went to check it out, and stamped out the still smoking bits. The whole room wasn’t on fire, so ... yay? Didn’t seem like a victory at all. 

By the time he returned to Dean’s side, he felt almost normal. Sam patted him on the shoulder, and helped Dean stand. Sam understood why he was having a hard time when he saw his chin and neck were coated with gore, and his shirt was completely soaked with blood. “Goddamn, how much did you lose?”

He looked down at his sodden shirt, and shrugged. “At least a pint. Maybe two.” Dean sat down hard on the edge of the bed. “Why the fuck was a witch that powerful picking off the homeless one by one? To save time, she could have taken out everyone at the park at once.”

“I was wondering the same thing.” Did they really need one more thing here that didn’t fit? What the hell was going on? Sam felt like they were seeing the tip of the iceberg, but not the real stuff going on beneath. They had just enough pieces of the puzzle to get them in danger, but not enough to see a way out. Goddamn, he hated cases like this.

Noticing once again how hollow eyed and pale Dean seemed, Sam grimaced. “Maybe we should get you to a hospital.”

He shook his head. “Nah, I’m fine. I just need fluids. And maybe some trucker’s speed.” Sam was pretty sure that last part was a joke. Maybe. Oh hell, with Dean, it was hard to say. He pulled out his flask and drank the rest down, leaving bloody fingerprints on it. 

Sam took out his phone, and after a brief internal debate, sent Rowena a text message.  _ Katie McClane, who is she?  _ He didn’t expect her to respond to him, but at least he gave it a shot. 

Now they had a real problem. They had a body in their room that they needed to get rid of, and what the fuck were they going to do with her? Dean figured they could put her in her car - she probably came in one, right? - and abandon it somewhere. Let the cops try and figure out what the hell happened. There was a possibility her coven would find her and come after them ... but if she had a coven, why were they missing in action today? Unless she didn’t have one. Was she a free agent? Some were, but they usually felt stronger in a group, with some exceptions. 

Dean had to clean up and change his shirt, for obvious reasons, and while he did that, Sam rolled Katie up in a bedspread, and wiped her blood off his face with his forearm. He did notice, while rolling her up, she seemed to be getting lighter and lighter. Sometimes that happened with witches, especially if they were really old. It was like time caught up to them once they couldn’t magic it away, and reduced them to bones and dust. If they were really lucky, there’d be no body to dump. 

Belatedly, Sam checked the fire alarm on the wall to see why it never went off. The batteries had been torn out. Fantastic. At least this was already a deathtrap motel. 

Dean came out of the bathroom still pale, but looking a bit better than before, and he belatedly wondered if he had some pills in his jacket. He had just about everything else. But Sam decided he didn’t care. If he could keep going, fine, whatever it took.

“Is she shrinking?” Dean asked, going over to the rolled-up bedspread. He tapped it with his foot, but from the reaction, there was no real weight to it. “Did she melt?”

It was a terrible joke, but that’s what they called it when time caught up to them. “Seems to have, yeah.”

“Fantastic. There’s some richly satisfying about flushing an evil witches’ ashes down the toilet.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but ... yeah, okay, there was. HIs phone hummed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to see Rowena had actually replied.

_ Are you trying to scandalize me, Samuel? Throwing that harlot’s name at me. She’s a cheap sellsword, and if you ever run into her, do us all a favor and get rid of her. _

Dean noticed the look on his face, and came over to see what he was reading. “Sellsword?”

“It’s what they used to call mercenaries.”

Dean glared at him. “I know what it means.” Then a look of delighted surprise spread across his face. “Holy shit. She was a hitwoman witch. Hitwitch?”

Sam shook his head.“Okay, if she was, we’re back at square one. Who the hell knew where to find a ... hitwitch -” Dean looked utterly pleased by this, so Sam let him have it. His brother was such a dork. ”- and why would they pay her to take out homeless people? None of this makes sense.”

Dean seemed to be staring at a nothing point in the room - or maybe at the bullet hole Sam had put in the wall - and said, “You’re standing on a ledge, but you’re on a building.”

Oh yeah, he was fucking stoned out of his gourd. “What? How many pills did you take?”

“It’s something Shirani said.” Dean walked back to the bedspread, and unraveled it. Katie was now down to dust and bones scattered inside expensive fabrics and even more expensive jewelry. When Dean picked up her pants - and a leg bone came falling out - Sam was about to ask what he thought he was doing when he dropped the clothes and revealed he was holding a black keyfob. He pressed it, and they heard the brief bleep of a car unlocking in the motel parking lot. “Why don’t we see how much evidence Katie left behind for us?”

It was kind of scary, but if pills made Dean this lucid, he should take them all the time. 


	5. Dying For So Long

_** 5 - Dying For So Long ** _

Of all the ways to die, bleeding to death was probably the best one. Not when you barfing it up with a bunch of needles, but otherwise it was surprisingly okay. Dean wished he didn’t know he had a preference in deaths, but at this point, he had to choose a side. Bleeding to death was basically getting tired and cold, and slipping out. Compared to other methods of death, it was relatively peaceful. Being beaten to death, mauled to death, and stabbed were probably the worst. It was a lot of pain and horror, and who needed that?

Dean was also aware the pills he took in the bathroom may have had a bit more flare on them than he anticipated, but hey - that was a risk you took. Especially with uppers. But he was functional and here, and almost not cold, and his head had that kind of helium balloon feeling he liked a lot. Sure, it still felt like he’d swallowed a whole bunch of knives, but not as many as before. He had to focus, stay on task, and probably drink a ton of Gatorade once he had the chance. He’d bled out so much in his life he should have been able to set up his own saline drip by now. Maybe carry it around in the trunk.

Focus. He had to focus. Sam was already looking at him funny. 

Considering there had been two gunshots in their room, Dean half expected to open the door and find a bunch of SWAT guys waiting for them. But the parking lot remained fairly empty. The Impala, a well used Toyota he figured to be the clerk’s car, and the car that stuck out like the sorest thumb ever: a sleek black GT Roadster. Dean let out a low whistle. “Holy fuck, the taste of this woman.”

“Consider how she made it,” Sam replied.

Of course he had to be a buzzkill. But he was right, as he usually was. Dean had to look at the sportscar and imagine how many deaths it cost. Suddenly it wasn’t attractive anymore.

Since it was a car built for speed, it didn’t have a lot of places to hide things. They found her phone in the glove box, and a few hex bags of unknown power. Sam was of the opinion they should get rid of them, because all they needed was another witch taking advantage of ready-made weapons, and it was a fair point. They also found some charms, a couple of half-empty bottles of essential oils, and thirty-two hundred dollars in cash taped beneath the driver’s seat. “What the fuck ..?” Dean asked, staring at it. He’d counted it twice, because he wasn’t sure if this was a hallucination or not. 

“Emergency fund?” Sam suggested. “In case she came up to an unexpected tollbooth?”

Dean sighed, wondering if this was the most cash he’d ever held in his hands. “I didn’t realize I could hate her more.”

“She didn’t sound like a big fan of ours either.”

The trunk was ridiculously small, but they found a bag containing what they guessed to be some emergency hex bag supplies, and they took that for themselves. They might have use for it sooner rather than later. 

There was no point in sticking around. They’d fought the witch and won - barely - and had set the room on fire. You’d think cops would be rolling up any minute. Dean felt terrible leaving such a sweet car in this shitty lot, but he had no choice in the matter. He also had no choice in not driving, as Sam had refused to let him considering he lost so much blood. Dean knew the actual reason was that he knew he’d taken some pills, and wasn’t risking it. Honestly, it was all fair. That helium balloon feeling in his head was starting to wear off, and he knew he was in for a hell of a crash within the next hour or so. 

  
While Sam drove, Dean looked through her phone. She hadn’t locked it, and why would she? She was a hitwitch and could kill anyone as soon as look at them. Maybe she figured, if you were good enough to get her phone, you could have it. 

She had no one in her contacts, which made Dean wonder if this was a burner phone, the kind you could get rid of easily, or if Rowena’s reaction was typical of most witches, and Katie didn’t have any friends. 

Which reminded him - harlot was such a pretty word. Why did it have such negative connotations? It sounded like it could be a flower or something.

Okay, focus. The phone was the important thing here.

He searched the phone for anything, and thought he hit the jackpot when he found her text messages, but then he started reading them. “How good are you at sudoku?” 

Sam gave him a funny look out of the corner of his eye. “Excuse me?”

“Her messages are all in code.”

He waited until they were at a stoplight to take the phone from him and look at it himself. “Huh. I didn’t know there were any apps available with this kind of encryption.”

Dean nodded, really not sure what Sam was talking about. But he didn’t care either, hence going along with it. “Could it be some sort of witchy thing?”

Sam handed him back the phone with a frown. “What witchy thing? I’ve never heard of casting a spell in binary code.”

It took him a minute, but Dean got it - computer language. Zero one zero. Which didn’t apply because the number he was looking at right now had no zeroes, and only one one. 

But it ate at the back of his mind. There was some kind of spooky thing with numbers, right? He read about it. Was it in one of Bobby’s books? He was pretty sure it was. He thought about it as he scrolled through text messages, hoping he’d find some with words.

Finally, Dean remembered. “Numerology.”

Sam gave him that look again. “What?”

“The spooky thing with numbers. Numerology.”

Sam sighed and shook his head. “That’s not really a spooky thing. It’s just another type of fortune-telling. Breaking down letters into numbers that supposedly have an influence on your life.”

“Still, that could be what she’s using.”

“The other person would have to know of numerology too.”

“Yeah.” Dean felt like Sam wasn’t thinking this through. Also, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. The crash was hitting earlier and harder than he expected. Well, he had lost a lot of blood. It was probably stupid to think there’d be no consequences to that. “They knew there was such a thing as a hitwitch. I don’t think knowing numerology is such a big deal to them.”

Sam grimaced, a sign that Dean recognized as very close to capitulation. He didn’t want to admit Dean may have had a point, so he was going to pretend to be mulling it over. It was okay. Dean did the same thing to Sam sometimes too. 

They were now at another fleabag motel, this one free of fire and dead witches, and Dean let Sam do the check-in, because he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he’d manage to stay upright through the whole thing. He was getting cold again, and his limbs felt like they were full of sand. Drugs could only get you so far when your tank was completely empty. 

Once that was done, Dean was able to get himself to the room on his own, but that was pretty much when he ran out of string. He threw himself down on the first bed, so it didn’t look like he collapsed, but Sam didn’t buy it. “You okay?”

Dean gave him a thumb’s up. “Just tired.” 

Sam let out a deep, disappointed sigh. “I told you we should go to the hospital.”

“I’m fine, just need some sleep.” At least he hoped that was true. Dean honestly didn’t know anymore, and didn’t care. 

It seemed like he closed his eyes for one second, and then it was all dark and quiet. 

**

Dean walked to the bunker kitchen, hoping he remembered to do some shopping before he left. Oh shit, did he? One time, a job took over two weeks, and they came back to find foreign organisms growing in the fridge. Not good, and also, horrifying to clean out. You would have thought holy water would help, but it didn’t. Flamethrower would have been better.

He walked past Cas sitting at a small table in the kitchen. “Hey Cas,” he said. 

“Hello, Dean. Feeling better?”

That made him pause and turn back around. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“Sam was really worried about you, and so was I. Blood loss is no small thing in a human.”

He stared at him a moment, and then the penny dropped. “Oh shit. This isn’t a dream - you’re doing that dreamwalking thing again, aren’t you?”

He nodded. He looked like his old self in the dreamscape, but there was a tiredness to his eyes that was new, and his normally neat black hair was mussed. He was recovering from the “mad dog” spell Rowena had hit him with, but he had a ways to go. “If you want to call it that, yes.”

“I didn’t think you were strong enough to do that. You’re not hurting yourself, are you?”

“No. This isn’t something that requires much energy on my part.”

Dean sat at the table, in the only other chair available. This was still weird, even though Cas had done this a handful of times over the years. “I’m sorry Sammy called you.”

“It wasn’t only because of you. He needed help with the cipher.”

“Oh, the code thing? It wasn’t numerology based?”

Cas smiled faintly. “No, but you weren’t far off. It was a numerical substitution cipher. From what I can tell, this Katie person was very paranoid. The decrypted messages seem to be coordinates and partial addresses.”

Dean nodded, before realizing what Cas was inadvertently saying. “How long have I been out?”

“From what I gather, a few hours. I’m sorry I can’t be there to heal you.”

“Hey, I had to deal with this shit before you. I’ll be okay. Just need some sleep.”

Cas cocked his head at him, in a way that was its own unspoken comment at this point. “Dean.”

“I’m cool, dude, really. It hardly feels like I was barfing up needles.”

Cas winced in a show of empathy. “Witches can be horrifying.”

“And also hitmen, which is a new one on me.”

“Many creatures could be, if they had no moral qualms about it. Angels even, though I would hope not.”

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense. What’s going on here, not angels as hitmen, because I can totally see how that would work.”

Cas dipped his head, accepting that. “Preying on the weak is, I’m afraid, a timeless sin.”

“Still makes you furious.”

“Of course.”

Dean briefly wondered if the fridge had a beer in it, and suddenly one appeared on the table in front of him. He would never get used to how weird this all was. 

“It’s not a communication style most humans are accustomed to.”

It took Dean a second, but he realized he had never said that part out loud. “Oh fuck, that’s right. You can read my mind in here.”

“Technically, “in here” is your mind, so of course I can.”

Dean grabbed the beer, and was surprised at how cold it was. This dream thought of everything. “So why can’t I read yours?”

“Because our minds are only one way compatible. This isn’t my true form, and the mind of my true form would most likely vaporize yours.”

Dean scoffed. “You have an excuse for everything.” 

Cas raised an eyebrow at him, but it was clear Dean was joking, and it got a smile out of him. Honestly, Cas looked better than he had before they left the bunker, so that was something. “Thank you,” Cas said, although Dean didn’t say it. “I think the rest and the peace have done me some good. I still feel like I should come join you.”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Dean replied. “We need you a hundred percent. Believe me, Sam and I can handle this. We took out the hitwitch, didn’t we?”

Again the head tilt. “Dean.”

“A win is a win, even if you were one second away from being counted out.”

Cas sat back, with the smallest of sighs. “Even after all these years, you remain a baffling puzzle.”

Dean shrugged. “Thank you?”

Cas shook his head, but he still smiled, and that felt like a win to Dean. If he could still be a confusing mess to an ageless energy being, that was an accomplishment, right? He decided it was, and no one was going to convince him otherwise. 

“You are ridiculous,” Cas said, with a kind of weary affection. 

“Why does everyone keep telling me that?”

He sat forward, putting his hands on the table. “You need to go easy on yourself. The fact that death hasn’t stuck so far doesn’t mean it never will.”

“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take it easy if you will. Okay?”

Dean saw a great deal of skepticism in his eyes, but he said, “Deal. Now wake up and get some fluids.”

Like it was a command - and maybe it was - Dean opened his eyes, and found himself staring up at a white stucco ceiling. But he realized it wasn’t only Cas that woke him up, but a knock on the door. 

He sat up to see Sam approaching the door with his gun out. “Identify yourself,” he said, raising the weapon level to the door. If someone tried to break it down, they’d catch a bullet in the gut first. 

“I’m a friend, Shirani sent me,” a woman said. Her voice was unfamiliar. 

“Uh huh. Did you think that would work?” Sam asked. 

“She told me to tell you that it wasn’t your fault.”

“What wasn’t?”

“She said you’d know. Sorry it’s so vague, but that’s all she’d tell me. You know how psychics can be.”

Dean had fallen asleep in his coat, so it was nothing for him to pull out his own gun and center it on the door. She might be able to avoid one shot, but not two. 

Sam unlocked the door, but still hadn’t put his gun away. Standing on the doorstep was a petite woman with short brown hair, with some sort of tattoo on the side of her neck. It kind of looked like vines, but it was hard to say from here. 

She held up her hands, and said, “I’m not armed. I swear, I’m friendly.”

Sam lowered his gun, but his body language was still tense. “If you are, be honest. Who are you, and why are you here?”

“I’m Lyla, and I’ve known Shirani for years. She’s a friend, and I think we may have the same enemy. It’s not only the homeless dying in Tacoma. It’s other supernaturals as well, peaceful ones who wouldn’t harm anyone.”

“And you know that how?” Sam asked.

“Because I’m on that list,” she said. She turned her head slightly, and the light turned her pupils into pure silver.

Oh shit. She was a shapeshifter. 


	6. Last I Heard, He Was Circling The Drain

**_ 6 - Last I Heard, He Was Circling The Drain _ **

This was the quandary of modern hunting, as far as Sam understood it - unlike what their father taught them, not all monsters were completely bad, just like not all humans and angels were completely good. There were shades of gray to everything, and things were rarely clear cut. 

But, having done this several times, there was the possibility this was a trap. In that case, the best option was to go along with it and be prepared to handle the shocking betrayal. Because honestly, even after Cas helped him decipher the messages on Katie’s phone, they had nothing to go on, except the shot caller of this whole thing was in Seattle. They guessed that already. Sam was willing to play this string out, just to have a way forward. It would be neither the first or last time they’d been betrayed by a potential ally regardless. 

He reluctantly holstered his gun, and held the door open. “You want to pretend I gave you the whole try something and we’ll end you speech?”

She nodded. “I’ll take that as a given.”

She stepped inside the room, and Sam kept her in the corner of his eye as he shut the door. “Do I need to mention we have a whole bunch of weapons?” Dean said. Sam had no idea he was awake, but it figured his intruder alarm would go off.

“No, hunter, I take that as a given too,” Lyla said. 

Sam leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. “Who are you wearing? Are they still alive?”

Lyla scowled at him, and pointed at her neck tattoo. “See this? I got this fourteen years ago. This body is mine and only mine.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Dean wondered. He’d put his gun away, but you’d have to be really dumb to assume Dean wasn’t ready to kill you if shit started going down. Their reputations should speak for themselves by now. 

“I’m not a slave to my biology,” she snapped. “Just because I was born a shapeshifter doesn’t mean I’m like my parents. I’ve been living an utterly boring life. I have a studio apartment and a cat, and a job down at the co-op market. You and Shirani are the only ones who know I’m not human.”

“And Shirani only knows because you couldn’t fool her,” Dean replied. 

Lyla stared molten death at Dean. “It must be exhausting to be that suspicious all the time.”

He shrugged. “I’m still alive, so it must be working.”

Sam could foresee a lot of sniping between Lyla and Dean, and it would get them nowhere. He decided to cut to the chase. “You said this person - or people, whichever - are killing off creatures too? How do you know?”

The look she gave him was only marginally less hostile than the one she shot at Dean. This was going to be a long night, wasn’t it? “A friend of mine was worried about the Lings, a vampire family that was trying to live a normal life, a/k/a not eating humans. They had seemingly dropped off the radar, which was weird. I went to their house to check on them, and found them all dead. The place stunk of witchcraft too. See, at first I thought it was asshole hunters, killing the first thing that moved, but the witchcraft thing didn’t make sense.”

“Witchcraft has a smell?” Dean asked. 

“Some hex bags do. I mean, as a general rule, your kind aren’t smart enough to use magic in that way.”

“Hey,” Dean said. Sam refused to take the bait.

A muscle in her jaw jumped before she went on. Either she was going to kill Dean or fuck him, or maybe both. Probably not a new experience for him. “That was a week ago. Then old man Jackson, a reformed ghoul, was killed in much the same way a few days later.”

“A reformed ghoul?” Dean asked. “Uh, how much of this are you expecting us to swallow, lady?”

Sam gestured at him to stow it. At least it seemed like he’d mostly recovered from the blood loss, or at least as much as he would allow himself. “Is that all?” Sam asked.

Now he got an ugly scowl that made her eyes go briefly silver. “No. My friend Tara is missing, and no one’s seen her in days. And before you ask, werewolf.”

The full moon was five days out. If you were going to kill a werewolf, now was the perfect time. “If it makes you feel any better, we killed the witch hired to do the killings.”

He saw on her face she got it. “Hired to do the killings? What does that mean?”

“She was a hitwitch, working for someone else,” Dean said. “We’re trying to work out who.” Dean finally noticed the sports drink Sam left on the nightstand for him, and he cracked it open and swallowed about half of it. If Sam remembered correctly, bleeding out left him thirsty too. 

Now Lyla looked genuinely baffled. “What? You didn’t find out who she was working for before you killed her?”

“She was trying to kill us,” Sam said. “There really wasn’t much chance for a negotiation.”

She made a disgusted noise and rolled her eyes. “Goddamn, don’t tell me that you’re also the stupidest hunters alive.”

“Says the shapeshifter who walked into our motel room,” Dean replied. 

Yeah, he was going to have to keep these two apart. “We have a lead,” Sam lied. “But I’m not sure where killing reformed creatures and homeless people takes us.”

At least Lyla fell silent, thinking it over. She was actually kind of cute. Her features were all delicate, and put together with her generally small size, made her look utterly harmless. Which was a trap, and he knew it. There was no telling how much monster was packed inside that frame. Especially with shapeshifters, taking them at face value was a sucker’s bet. “What’s the common denominator here?”

“Inconvenient people?” Dean guessed. “In their way?”

Sam looked at him with genuine surprise. Sometimes the most amazing things fell out of his mouth. “That’s not a bad idea.” Sam went to his laptop, and called up a map of the Tacoma-Seattle area, where he was matching coordinates and addresses with Katie’s decrypted messages. He looked at Lyla. “Can you show me where the Lings lived? And Jackson and Tara.”

Lyla seemed dubious, her eyes scudding back and forth between him and Dean, as if to confirm Dean wasn’t going to come sneaking up on her with a net, and reluctantly showed him. Sam put them together with Mercer’s and Zack’s disappearance, and the disappearance of three others, unknown by Ramon, but mentioned in the encrypted text messages. 

Sam showed the resulting data to Dean before turning the screen in Lyla’s direction again. It was an almost perfect circle, covering five miles within the Tacoma city limits. “What does this prove?” Lyla asked. She sounded genuinely puzzled.

“It proves there’s a hunting ground,” Sam said. “Whoever’s doing this, there’s something they want in this circle, and they seem to think the homeless and reformed creatures might have it.”

“Do we have any data on unreformed creatures?” Dean wondered. 

Sam looked at Lyla, and she shrugged. “I’m not exactly in the know about others, guys. I think they think of us as traitors.”

“I can see what kind of hunter contacts we have in the area,” Sam said. “See if anyone’s noticed a reduction in monsters around these parts.”

“Five miles is a lot of coverage for one witch,” Lyla said. 

Sam and Dean exchanged a look, and it was one of those things that had happened so much over the years, neither needed to speak, as they were thinking the same thing. It was very possible Katie had a partner - maybe even a shapeshifter partner. They had to keep their eyes opened, and aimed in her direction. “She was powerful,” Sam said. “I don’t think she needed one.”

“How powerful could she be if you guys killed her?” Lyla replied. 

“Yeah, this isn’t a roast,” Dean said. “Either be a team player, or get the fuck out.”

She clicked her tongue. “Touchy, aren’t we?”

“He’s right,” Sam said. “The smart ass cracks aren’t helping. We can do this with or without you. Your choice.”

She did the eye roll again, and Sam wondered how old she was. Based on looks, she could be anywhere between twenty and forty, but again, you couldn’t count on anything that simple with a shapeshifter. She could be a hundred years old; she could be fourteen. “God, I forgot how sensitive you men are. Fine. I’m in, for now. But it’s not my fault if you leave the door open for the jokes.”

“Do I go to where you work and slap the tofu out of your hands?” Dean said. “We don’t do this shit for fun, you know.”

“I don’t know about that, Dean Winchester. I’ve heard stories about you. Maybe you do kind of like it.”

“What did I just say?” Sam asked, unable to keep the peevishness from his voice. Okay, yes, he sounded like a teacher trying to get an unruly class in line, but that was kind of what was going on here. “Stay professional, or leave now.”

“Fine,” she sighed, once again like an unruly teenager. Sam was dying to ask her how old she was, but he had no reason to believe she would tell him the truth. He was leaning towards teenager, though, and that scared the fuck out of him. A teenage shapeshifting assassin would be able to gain so much access to so many places, where so many vulnerable people were. 

Dean stood up and stretched. “Okay, let’s gear up.”

“For what?” Lyla asked.

Rather than verbally reply, he came over to Sam, and tapped the laptop screen. Dean had noticed what Sam did when he created the circle - Tia’s house was almost smack dab in the center of it. Ramon and company could be a target. The next one, in fact. 

Goddamn it. If there was anything he hated more than stakeout/guard duty, right now Sam didn’t know what that was.

**

Dean drove this time, because he was obviously sober, and also, Sam wanted to keep an eye on Lyla. 

You’d think, if she was Katie’s partner in crime, she couldn’t make a move with them there. But there was no discounting the possibility of other accomplices. Two might be too meager a number for this. Maybe every member got their own mile. Again, all options were on the table, until they could winnow some out. 

Sam was pretending to still search for information on his laptop, but Dean had shifted the rearview mirror so he could get an uninterrupted view of Lyla. If she noticed, she was being coy about it. “So what is that tattoo on your neck?” Dean asked. Getting personal with her would lower her guard, if only a little bit. 

Sullenness flashed in her eyes, but she scowled and looked out the window. “It’s a tree.”

“With no leaves?”

“It’s a dead tree,” she said. She crossed her arms over her chest. 

“And what’s the significance of that?” Dean continued. Sam was glad he wasn’t trading insults with her, and he knew he must have been dying to. 

“It represents my family tree.”

That was more than a little worrisome. Dean traded a sidelong glance with Sam before he asked, “Are they all dead?”

“Yes.” Her lips thinned to a grim line, and she continued staring out at the darkness. 

“How’d that happen?” Sam asked, not unsympathetically.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

Well, if anyone knew about dead parents, it was the Winchesters. She might have been in the right car after all. 

Tacoma at night was a different city. During the day it was industrial and a little grungy, where attempts to “beautify” certain areas didn’t quite work. At night, it was bright lights and looming shadows, somehow a little more cosmopolitan and a bit more sinister at the same time. Seattle at night was kind of like being in a modern video game, but Tacoma was more like an 8-bit one that never quite made it to market. More dystopian, but somehow more real at the same time. It was a great place for monsters - human and otherwise - to hide.

Because of the way the street was laid out, they had no hope of hiding the Impala while keeping an eye on the house, so they parked a car length down from it, and blatantly watched it. If Lyla was one of Katie’s assistants, it wouldn’t matter anyway. 

Dean instantly busted out a candy bar, and started eating it, ripping into it like a starving lion. Lyla seemed appropriately appalled. Dean must have noticed it in the rearview, because he said defensively, “I lost a lot of blood today.”

“How, shaving?” she replied.

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, swallowing a sigh. Was he going to get through this, or would he have to bind and gag the both of them and stuff them in the trunk? That honestly sounded good. 

There were lights on in Tia’s place, mostly upstairs, although they had a bright porch light illumining their tiny garden patch. That made it unlikely whoever might attack them would come from the front. Which was why, earlier, when they were searching for possible hex bags on the outside of the house, Sam set up a secret webcam on a tree branch that had a great view of the back of the house. If anything moved back there, they’d have a record of it. He tapped into the feed, but so far, so good. 

Sam wasn’t attempting to violate their privacy. He was still worried Ramon and family being collateral damage. Too many people had died on their watch already. 

They’d been there about ten minutes when Dean stopped eating his second candy bar, and pointed at the laptop feed. “What’s that?”

The shadows moved in a way they shouldn’t have. Dean had already dropped the candy bar and pulled out his gun, when Sam said, “Wait a second.” He thought he caught a hint of light blue in the shadow, cutting around the back and coming in their direction.

He was proven correct when thirty seconds later, Ramon came walking up to the car, waving. His hair was now mostly dyed light blue, and he wore a really zipper heavy black leather jacket, zipped up to the collar. “You know your car sticks out like a narc at Hempfest, right?”

Dean pointed to the backseat. “Get in, and don’t slam the door.”

Ramon nodded, and did his best, but there really was no quiet way to close the door on the Impala. It was just too heavy. Ramon saw Lyla, and seemingly ignored her standoffish glare. “Hey, manic pixie dream girl, hi. I’m the manic pixie dream boy. My friends call me Ramon.” He unzipped his jacket and held out a hand to shake hers, but Lyla seemed uninterested. 

Dean suddenly roared with laughter, and it took Sam a moment to figure out why. It was Ramon’s t-shirt. It said, in bold, rainbow hued letters:  _ Not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you. _

“That shirt’s awesome man,” Dean said, still grinning madly. “I’m surprised Tia lets you wear it out of the house.”

“She doesn’t,” Ramon admitted. “That's why my jacket was zipped up.”

“So you have children working for you now?” Lyla asked.

“Ooh, meow,” Ramon replied, not at all put off by her frosty demeanor. But he wouldn’t be, would he? He was a street kid before they got him out of there. Being milquetoast in that environment didn’t get you very far. “You don’t exactly look like Dumbledore either. Are you even old enough to legally drink?”

That seemed to get under Lyla’s skin. She glared at him a moment before turning the look on them. “What is the point of this?”

Ramon raised his hand. “Excuse me. Who is Maleficent here?”

Dean was still smiling. He was enjoying this, which seemed like a bad idea to Sam. Was he going to have to gag all three of them? Yes, the Impala had a large trunk, but not that large. “Her name’s Lyla,” Sam offered. “She’s noticed someone’s killing off reformed monsters in the city as well.”

“Whoa, what?” Ramon replied, looking between them. “What does that mean?”

“We’re still trying to figure that out,” Sam said. He looked back at Lyla. “And he brought the homeless people being killed off to our attention, so cut him a little respect here.”

Lyla’s cutting look at Ramon increased in intensity. “There’s no fucking way you’re a hunter. Hunters aren’t kids.”

“Uh, yeah we are,” Dean piped up. His second candy bar was down. “I think I went on my first official hunt at age ... oh hell, seven? Eight? Somewhere in there. Kinda hard to keep track after so many years.”

Both Lyla and Ramon gave him similar looks of stark horror. “What?” Lyla asked.

“Dude, you were fighting monsters at seven?” Ramon asked. “How the fuck are you still alive?”

Dean shrugged. “Shirani told me it was my angel friend.”

Ramon’s eyes somehow got wider. “Wait, angels exist? Angels exist, and you have one as a friend?”

“I think I probably oughta email you some files,” Sam admitted.There was so much for Ramon to catch up on. Maybe the sheer number of monsters alone would keep him from becoming a hunter. 

He reacted as though Sam had thrown a punch at him. “Email? You think I have an email?”

Oh God. Now Sam felt as ancient as hell. Either hunters were getting younger every year, or he was getting really old. Probably both. Which was weird, because Sam didn’t think he - or the world - would live long enough to get much older. He never had Dean’s fatalistic belief that they’d be lucky to see the south side of thirty, but he’d still lived much longer than he ever anticipated. 

Someone’s phone hummed, and after everyone searched, it turned out to be Ramon’s phone. “Yeah?” His face paled noticeably. “What ..? Sarge, I can barely hear you.”

Dean looked back at him. “Is Sarge okay?”

Ramon shrugged as he listened. “Sarge, I can’t - damn it. I lost him.” Ramon scowled down at his phone. “He said something about the Fifth Avenue bridge. I think he’s in trouble.”

“Right.” Dean started the car, and tore out of there, heading for Fifth Avenue. 

Sam only hoped that, when they got there, they didn’t find another corpse. 


	7. Hit The Ground

**_ 7 - Hit The Ground _ **

It wasn’t far, but still Fifth Avenue felt farther away than it should have. Dean even blew through a red light because the intersection was empty, and seriously, fuck it. If he got caught on camera he’d pay the ticket. 

The bridge was actually a small, low one made by the overpass, but save for the passing glow of headlights, there was zero illumination. It was a perfect sinkhole of darkness. Did the city purposely design great little murder areas? Was there a vampire on the original city zoning commission? 

As he pulled over to the side of the road, the headlights flashed on a person, and for a moment, their eyes seemed to turn a yellowish gold. “Oh, fucking vampires,” Lyla said. 

Their eyes could do that? New one on Dean. “Okay. Ramon, you can sit this one out.”

“No fucking way.” 

He tried, right? “Fine, I’ll give you a machete.”

“Uh, what?”

“Don’t need one,” Lyla said, getting out of the car and heading towards the darkness. 

He and Sam got machetes out of the trunk, and got an extra for Ramon, who was standing there looking nervous. When Dean handed him the weapon, he looked at it with obvious dread. “Whoa, this is heavier than I thought.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“I want to do this.” He paused briefly. “What are we doing?”

“Gotta chop the heads off.”

His eyes widened dramatically. “Uh ... oh. Isn’t that zombies?”

“It’s vampires too. Actually, very few things survive without a head.”

“Oh, yeah. That makes sense.”

Should he tell him about Leviathans? Nah. Best to get all of this info as necessary. Dean started walking towards the fitfully illuminated darkness, and said, “Stay behind me. Don’t get bit.”

“Yeah, once was really enough for me,” Ramon admitted. 

Underpasses like this were a natural gathering place for the homeless seeking some remnant of shelter, and because of that, they were often fenced off or patrolled heavily, in one of those common acts of civic cruelty. The chain link fence that supposedly blocked the homeless from access was torn down, and even before his eyes adjusted, it was clear there were several different fights going on, between a handful of vampires, and a handful of homeless people. Shit. He was going to have to confirm vampire before he swung on anyone. 

Dean had never wondered too much about monster on monster fights - although some would be undoubtedly fun to watch, as long as your life wasn’t immediately in danger - but just as he wondered how a vampire on shapeshifter fight would go, Lyla walked up to a vampire at least a foot taller than her, punched him in the face, and sent him flying back into a concrete pillar so hard, he swore he felt the tremble of it through the ground. Okay. Shapeshifter could absolutely handle vampire. Would a vampire bite a shapeshifter? Could they drink their blood, or was there something about it vamps didn’t like? He had to remember to ask Lyla about that later, although would she tell him? She seemed to have a stick up her ass about him, which was pretty rich considering the first thing that really got him on police radar was the shapeshifter impersonating him. Until then, all he had was a handful of misdemeanors. Maybe it was simply a state of mutual contempt.

A dark figure launched itself at Dean, and he caught it by the throat. The male vampire hissed at him, showing teeth, and Dean released him only to shove him backwards. Only a few steps, as the vampire quickly recovered, but he expected that. Dean had only wanted to get him on the back foot so he could get a good swing. As he lunged anew, Dean brought the machete around in a level arc, and  lopped off his head in a smooth, hard motion. His head hit the ground before his body did. It was weirdly satisfying.

He moved deeper into the shadows and concrete, and discovered a scrum between a vampire and victim on the ground. Dean simply chopped through the vampire’s neck before he was even aware someone else was there, and kicked the body off the victim. As it turned out, it was Sarge. 

“That crazy fucker was biting me,” he said. He seemed more amazed than anything.

Dean gave him a hand up, and surreptitiously checked him out. Bite wound on the neck, but it wasn’t too bad, nor was it bleeding excessively. He’d be okay. “They’re vampires.”

“Are they?” He looked around, and Dean wondered if he could see better than he could. Just when his night vision would set itself, a car would drive by, and its brights would white it out again. Oh, also? There was a minor bloody riot going on, and people were driving by like nothing was happening. In a way it was good, because no more civilians were putting themselves in danger, but on the other hand, it seemed remarkably callous. Dean wasn’t sure there was a response here that would make him happy. “Am I gonna turn into one now?”

“It make you drink some of its blood?”

“Ick. No.”

“You’re fine.”

Another figure came plunging out of the dark, something with big fangs, and Dean happily chopped its head half right down the middle. No, it wasn’t exactly a decapitation, but it was a killer blow all the same. Sarge watched this clinically, as if he was at a show. Dean was relatively sure he was drunk, but he was a career drinker, so it wasn’t obvious. Dean had times like that too. “So does a stake through the heart kill them or what?”

“Take the head.” He gave Sarge a friendly pat on the shoulder, and said, “You might wanna hang back. My brother and I have been doing this a long time.”

“That guy’s your brother?” Sarge repeated. “Wow. You guys don’t look alike at all.”

Dean shrugged. No reason to get into the messy family tree right now, although honestly he thought he kind of saw it in the eyes. 

He went further into the dark shadows and echoing concrete, as the low ceiling and angled walls made sounds carry in curious ways. He braced for attack when he heard footsteps, but they were actually much farther behind him. A car with a booming stereo drove by, making everything worse.

In a slashing arc of headlights, he quickly saw that Sam was doing fine, chopping his way through another vampire, and Lyla seemed to be taking some savage enjoyment from punching around vamps like they were ninety eight pound weaklings on the beach. Since none had attempted to bite her, Dean decided he was just going to guess that shapeshifter blood was icky. It would make sense, right? Or maybe he was just prejudiced.

One vampire attacked him while another swooped in a two pronged attack, but Ramon jumped in and slashed the one attempting to flank. He got maybe half the head off, he didn’t slice through, but since Ramon cut him in the back, the vampire’s head was now flopped over at a weird angle. It was as useless as the headless corpse in Reanimator, and Dean would have laughed, except he was still fighting the first vampire. He managed to kick it back and hack its head off as a homeless woman pushed the floppy headed vampire right into traffic, where he was instantly nailed by a huge SUV. It was a _thump, squelch,_ and _crack_ , noises so violent and disturbing Dean couldn’t help but wince. Technically, that wouldn’t kill a vamp, but how long would it take to heal from that? Weeks, maybe a month or more. And that was before you counted in the partial beheading. Yikes. He was in for a bad spring. 

Dean pushed deeper into the dark, and eventually came out onto the other side. Had they really cleared out the vamps? Their number had been impossible to judge in the dark, and it was conceivable a couple fled when they realized how badly this fight was going. They had probably assumed this would be an easy midnight snack. 

Halfway back to the car, he reunited with Sam and Ramon, who looked fine. Ramon was shaking his right hand, and said, “I didn’t realize how hard it is to cut someone’s head off. Oh God, I can’t believe I said that sentence.”

“It’s all in the follow through,” Dean told him. “You’re trying to hit a home run, not bunt for first.”

“I’ll take your word on that, Mr. Butch,” Ramon replied. In the temporary slice of headlights scudding by, he thought he saw Sam laughing at that. Jackass.

When they returned to the car, Lyla was there, with one of the vamps bent over the hood. She had him in an arm lock, and he didn’t look happy. “Who are you fucking working for?” she demanded.

“No one,” the vampire said. He looked like one of those yuppie types Sarge disdained, only slumming it in jeans and t-shirt advertising a strip club. Lyla jerked his arm further up his back, and he made a noise of pain. “Let me go you fucking skinstealer!”

Oh - vampires had a different name for shapeshifters? Nice. Dean put his hands on the hood and got eye level with the vamp. He was in a lot of pain. ”Do you wanna live? ‘Cause the only way you’re not joining your friends on a rocket ride to purgatory tonight is if you tell us who sent you out here. Otherwise, you’re useless to us, and as far as I’m concerned, our shapeshifter friend can have all the fun with you she wants.”

Dean heard a snap of bone, and the vampire howled. “You’re running out of time, asshole,” Lyla said.

“Skin shedding bitch! Fine! I don’t know who hired us, we got money from a middleman.”

“Name,” Sam said. 

“I dunno! It was something stupid, like Victor or Vincent.”

“Where’d you meet him?” Lyla asked.

“The back room of Hanrahan's.”

“And what exactly were you hired to do?” Dean asked. 

“Clear out all the vagrants between here and Tenth.”

Dean didn’t even want to think how many people that must have included. Probably a shocking amount, more than he could ever know. “Why?”

The vampire met his eyes, and somehow managed to scoff. “Who the fuck cares why?”

Dean pushed himself away from the car and walked off. Lyla could do what she wanted with him. The vampire must have realized that was what was going on, as he called after him, sounding panicked. “Hey, wait!”

What followed was a deep, sickening _ crunch _ . Quieter than the vamp getting turned to pate by the SUV, but somehow far worse. When Dean turned around and went back, it was only to see that Ramon looked a second away from vomiting. “Did you really have to do that right in front of us?” Sam asked. 

“Still cleaner than beheading him,” Lyla said. She was reaching down to something on the ground, and Dean assumed it was the corpse of the vampire. The hood wasn’t scuffed, but there was some blood on it that hadn’t been there before. At least he knew from experience that washed off pretty well. She came up with a phone, and a wallet that she tossed at Sam. “Don’t know if there’s any information in there, but might as well check. Now let’s get out of here before the cops show up.”

“If they show up,” Ramon said. He still looked pale, but must have managed to ride out his nausea. The only thing Dean could imagine happened was Lyla completely crushing the vamp’s skull, or maybe breaking his neck so thoroughly she severed it from the spine. Kinda gross? But she was right, not really worse than beheading. 

Sam dutifully looked in the wallet, and pulled out the vampire’s cards, because of course he had a credit card. Dean wondered if the driver’s license dated back to when he was human, or if a vampire actually bothered to wait at the DMV one day. It felt like there could be a sitcom idea in that. “Any cash?” Dean asked. 

Sam looked, and pulled it out. “Few twenties, I think. Why?”

Dean plucked it out of his hand, and walked over to where Sarge was, standing by the broken fence. “Think they’re gone for the night?” he asked.

“For now.” He gave him the cash. “Stay together, keep everybody safe, call us if things get weird.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Good luck fighting monsters.”

“Thanks. We always need it.”

Sarge gave him a small salute, and Dean returned it before going back to the car. When he got in and started it, he was belatedly aware there was a very tense silence. He wondered what, out of the million possible things, it could be. 

They’d been back on the road for about thirty seconds when Sam finally broke it. “So, are you going to tell us the story of how you got so strong, or are we supposed to guess?”

Lyla made a noise of disgust, and he caught her crossing her arms over her chest in the rearview. “Do you know how much energy it takes to shift?”

“Can’t say I do,” Sam replied, giving her his bitchiest look. 

“Well, as it turns out, if you don’t shift for years, it kind of ... builds up.”

“Is that what you’re going with?” Dean wondered. It sounded super fake. Did he know for a sure it was a lie? No. It just seemed weird.

“Wait,” Ramon said. “She’s a monster?” He shoved himself over on the seat until he was right up against the door.

She scowled at him. “If I was really a monster, you’d already be dead.”

“She’s a shapeshifter, but supposedly she hasn’t done that for years,” Sam said.

Ramon looked at her with a new kind of fascination. “Like Mystique?”

Dean scoffed. “Oh, I wish. Nah, shapeshifters are killers who look like us, but aren’t.”

“I am not a killer.” Absolutely everyone in the car stared at her, including Dean in the rearview. After a moment, she added, “Vampires don’t count.”

“You’re still sticking with the story that blue balls makes you The Hulk?” Dean asked, mostly just curious. 

“Do you relate everything to your dick?” she snapped.

Dean didn’t think he did, but it was a bit of a conundrum, as it still felt like a fair cop. While he pondered it, Sam jumped in to get them back on track. “Okay, let’s back burner this for now. I take it Hanrahan’s a bar.”

Lyla didn’t look any happier, but her posture relaxed a bit. “Yeah. A really sleazy one. Not surprised vamps hang around there.”

“I’m wondering how we can get an invite to the back room.”

“Maybe there’s something on his phone, but it’s locked,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling it out. 

“Have you tried blood as the code?” Sam wondered.

“What? No. Even they’re not stupid enough to be so obvious.”

“Try blood,” Sam insisted.

She sighed heavily, and punched it in to humor him. In a second, she exclaimed, “You've gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Sam shrugged. “It was either that or password.”

She studied the phone, its illumination like a spotlight in the otherwise dark car, and said, “Hmm, maybe there’s a way.” Her fingers went to town typing something on the tiny keypad, in that fast way that everybody seemed to have down nowadays. Dean hated to think he was slow and clumsy, but he was getting better. 

“A way to what?” Sam asked, looking back at her. 

“There’s a text here, about good old Tony texting someone named Matt and thanking him for the easy money.” Tony had been the name of the vampire she squished. Dean wasn’t sure why, but Tony seemed like an odd name for a vamp. “I just texted him saying he had friends coming in from Portland who wanted in on the action. Let’s see if he responds.”

Worth a shot. There was no telling how fast tonight’s massacre would get around. Maybe there was a margin for error, a time period when it was possible Tony sent the text. Even if not, they’d only be walking into a trap, which they’d done so many times he and Sam found them kind of boring. You could only be Admiral Ackbar’d so many times before it lost all meaning.

As soon as Dean finished parking in the same slot in front of Tia’s house, there was a weird musical sting. Lyla checked Tony’s phone. “Send them on. Usual place, eleven PM, have them hit up Liam and say Ferdinand.”

“It’s that easy?” Ramon replied.

“Could be a trap,” Sam said. “So be ready for that.”

“Always am,” Lyla said.

“I -” Ramon began.

“No,” Dean interrupted. “Sit this one out.”

He frowned at him. “Why are you always trying to sideline me?”

“Because you’re a kid who deserves a hell of a lot better than dying by the hands of a psychopathic monster at a bar,” Dean told him. “We have no idea what we’re facing, and we can’t prepare ourselves for that, not to mention you. If you wanna be there when we go after the main boss, fine, we’ll see what we can do. Just sit this one out, leave it to the pros who are used to getting our asses kicked.”

“Speak for yourself,” Lyla said.

Dean ignored her, and turned back to look at Ramon. “Seriously. Let us sort this shit out, and we’ll bring you back for the third act. Cool?”

Ramon glared at him for a full thirty seconds of stony silence. Dean waited it out, because Claire had trained him to weather many disdainful teen looks. Hell, if it was a job, he could probably make good bucks at it. “What guarantee do I have you’re letting me back in?”

“Have I let you down before? Trust me.”

“Famous last words,” Lyla muttered. Dean was still deliberately ignoring her. 

Another few seconds of silence, and Ramon rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’m holding you to it.”

“As I expect.”

Ramon got out the car, but before he closed the door, Dean added, “But if you show up at the bar tomorrow, I’m telling Tia everything.”

He looked instantly stricken. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

Dean heard Ramon sigh dramatically as he shut the door and stomped off towards the house. 

“We’ve created a monster,” Sam said. 

“You know, we can just knock him out and throw him in the trunk,” Lyla said.

“Plan B,” Dean replied. He didn’t bother to tell her that was his plan B for almost everything. 

It was good to have back up plans. You never knew when you were going to need them. 


	8. Land of the Lost

**_ 8 - Land of the Lost _ **

Considering how wrong things could have gone, Sam supposed they should take this as a victory. Weird how it didn’t feel like one.

What they knew: someone was hiring monsters and a hitwoman witch to take out the homeless and reformed monsters in a five mile radius. Why? Unknown. To say that wasn’t a lot was a slap in the face to nothingness.

Lyla left to walk home at about three in the morning. They would have worried about a young woman walking home this late at night, except she just rage stomped a bunch of vampires without breaking a sweat. They probably needed her to protect them. 

Dean waited until she was no longer in line of sight to ask, “What the fuck is up with that?”

“I know, I don’t get it either.”

“Could she be juicing or something? Dean wondered.

Sam almost laughed. “What? You think she’s doing shapeshifter steroids?”

He shrugged. “Got a better idea?”

Come to think of it, he hadn’t. He’d never heard of a drug that would enhance a shifter’s power ... but did it have to be a drug? “She could have a spell on her.”

Dean closed his eyes and dramatically dropped his forehead to the steering wheel. “Hitwitch partner.”

Sam nodded. “Hitwitch partner.” 

“So we have to assume she tipped off whoever was on the end of that text message.”

“I doubt they needed to be tipped off if she’s with us already.”

Dean sat back with a sigh. Should he tell him he could be as dramatic as Ramon, and whoever Lyla was pretending to be? No, Sam decided to simply keep it to himself. “We can’t beat her in a straight fight.”

Sam shrugged. “So it can’t be a straight fight. It’s not like we haven’t fought shifters before.”

“True.” Dean pulled another candy bar out of his pocket, and Sam shook his head.

“Dude, seriously.”

“It’s one of those energy bars,” Dean argued, as if that made any difference. Most of them had so much sugar in them, a candy bar would actually be better for you. But that was yet another fight he didn’t want to have with him again.

They called off the stakeout when the sky started to lighten. Monsters could attack during the day, sure, but the increased number of witnesses was often a natural prohibition.

On the way back to the motel, they stopped for food - of course - but to be fair, Sam was starving by then too. He wanted caffeine, but didn’t allow himself to have it, as he had to get some rest sometime.

Dean went right to bed, but Sam stayed up, doing a bit of research. It went without saying that shifters were stronger than humans, but that strong? He found some lore in the database that suggested shifters could actually become stronger if they withheld from shifting, but it was speculation more than anything else. There was also some debate on whether a shifter could actually stop from doing it. There was so much not known about them it was kind of crazy. But they were a species that really didn’t like to share.

It was a shame he didn’t know Lyla’s last name so he could do a search for her, but that had to be deliberate. She didn’t want them looking her up. Which was why he had to figure out how to get her surname next time ... although, why was he assuming Lyla was her real name? All of this could be a fraud. 

Sam was too frustrated and tired to go on, so he went to bed feeling absolutely no wiser. This deep in an investigation, they should have had more by now. The fact that they hadn’t felt like a personal failure.

**

Sam woke several hours later, feeling like he’d hardly had any sleep at all. Dean was sitting at the small table in the room, loading several guns with shifter killing silver bullets. When he saw Sam was awake, he shrugged. “Might as well be prepared.”

That was Dean’s actual motto. Hence his jacket of way too many weapons, and what Sam had taken to mentally calling his “pockets of mystery”. When he was a kid, he used to wonder if Dean was a magpie, just picking up shiny objects at random, but looking back, there was a method to Dean’s madness. He tried to prepare for everything, because he never knew what Dad and life were going to throw at him. He had to get set to take on a million impossible things, and he would always fail somewhere, because the test was rigged against him from the jump. Dad did some good things in his life, and some really bad ones, but the worst thing he ever did was put all that weight on Dean. Again, Sam would have given anything if Dean would get mad at Dad for it, but he never had. Would he ever? Also, Sam was kind of low key mad at Dean for never getting mad at Dad. 

It didn’t matter. No, strike that, it totally did fucking matter, but Dad was long dead, and there was so much trauma under the bridge, they probably had to be picky about what they spent their emotional energy on. Sam was honestly kind of surprised this still bugged him, but it probably always would. 

Once Sam had showered and changed, and Dean had loaded up all the weapons into the car, they went out for breakfast, although it was actually lunch since it was afternoon. They went to a small cafe that seemed to be attached to some small apartment building? It was hard to say. But the coffee and pastries were really good, no matter how weird the set up. 

  
Checking out the local paper, there was zero mention of what went on under the overpass last night. Sam marveled at it. People had definitely seen them. Men with machetes taking on other men with way too many teeth, and no one said anything? Maybe someone had, and they were assumed to be drunk or something. On the one hand it was good, because at least they weren’t in a police station trying to explain they were stopping a vampire attack. On the other hand, it was terrible, because the human ability to ignore something going on right in front of them seemed endless. 

Was he in a bad mood? He chalked it up to getting so little sleep. When this case was over, he was just going to sleep for twelve hours.

They decided to check out the bar beforehand, just to get an idea of it, but since the Impala was such a distinct car - Ramon had a point about it sticking out, although he was dying to know how he would know it did it as much as a narc at Hempfest - they parked it in on the next block and decided to reconnaissance on foot. It wasn’t uphill, so that kept Dean’s bitching to a minimum. 

It was a good thing they did, because unlike most bars, Hanrahan’s seemed to do its best not to be noticed. It was a small, barely marked building beside a closed consignment shop at the end of the block. There was a tiny sign beside the door that read ‘ _ Loiterers Will Be Eaten’ _ . Sam bet everyone thought that was a joke. 

“Demon bar?” Sam asked Dean. He was the unfortunate expert in this. 

He frowned at the building like it wasn’t answering his questions. “If it is, it’s pretty visible for one.” At Sam’s disbelieving look, he added, “Relatively speaking. Maybe they like snacks wandering in.”

“You realize, if this is a demon bar ...”

“Yeah, we smell like food. They’ll know we’re here to screw them. But if it’s a trap, it doesn’t matter, right?”

“Yeah, we’re screwed either way.”

As they walked back to the car, Dean suggested, “Let’s wire Lyla up. She can go in and we can eavesdrop.”

“Until the connection mysteriously drops, so she can have a long talk with her co-conspirators.”

“So we bug her twice, and only tell her about one.”

Sam glanced at Dean out of the corner of his eye, once again equally impressed and horrified by his brother. It was funny how often those two feelings went together. “And how do you figure we do that?”

Dean shrugged. “You’re the tech guy. I figured you'd know.”

Sam sighed, and didn’t want to admit that yeah, he had a couple of ideas. It felt devious, but then again, if she was the witch’s partner, she deserved nothing. 

By the time they returned to the car, Dean got a call from Ramon. He put it on speaker. “Okay, guys, I think they got another friend of mine, Didi. They sometimes worked a corner on 7 th , but they also have a place they’re squatting at here. No one’s seen them since last night, their stuff is still at the squat, and I just found their phone in the gutter.” He said it all in a rush, and his voice was pained, like he was trying not to get upset, but it wasn’t working. “The vampires said something about clearing out everything between here and 10th. Did they ... was 5 th the last place they went?”

Sam had been wondering about that. Had they caught them at the tail end of their wilding spree, only because Sarge knew to call Ramon if things got weird? He shared a look with Dean, and knew he’d wondered the very same thing. “We don’t know,” Dean said. “You might be in as better position to tell us.”

Ramon made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a sob. It was hard to hear. It wasn’t their fault, and yet it still felt like a personal failure. “Fuck.” It was a whisper, with barely any strength at all. “We gotta end these motherfuckers.”

“That’s the plan.” Dean said. 

Ramon was quiet for a very long moment, and they could hear traffic in the background. “I know what you said, but I gotta come with you tonight.”

Dean shook his head, even though he couldn’t see it. “No, you gotta guard Tia’s place.”

“What?”

“We have no idea how long this is gonna go, and we won’t be there to keep a watch on the house. That’s gonna fall to you.”

“Uh ...” Ramon was silent again, and Sam assumed it was something that hadn’t occurred to him. “What do I do? I mean, do you need to invite vampires in?”

“No, that’s bullshit. If they want in, they’re coming in. Put salt down in front of every window and door, so if they try and sic a demon on you, they won’t be able to get in.”

“What do demons look like? Please don’t tell me human.”

“Sorry kid, they possess humans. Basically they look like black smoke that forces itself into people.”

“Sounds fun.”

“But a possessed person will occasionally have all black eyes, as well as an aversion to salt and holy water. Also, these people become homicidal bastards.”

“Ah, well, at least that’s a tell.” More street sounds, and a noise away from the phone. Hard to say if it was a sigh or a sob. “Does this ever get any easier?”

“No, but you do get used to it,” Dean said, not unkindly. “But if this breaks your heart now ... walk away. You try and get used to that, but it’s like reopening a wound every goddamn time.”

Sam glanced at Dean, but he was looking out the passenger window. It was always odd, these moments. Dean wasn’t one for talking about anything really, but it always surprised Sam in those rare times, to realize his macho meathead brother was actually all soft and squishy in the middle. It was a weird dichotomy, and Sam didn’t know how he lived with that. You’d have thought he’d break apart under the strain. Maybe that was expressed in the fact that in general, Dean had a hard time processing emotions, and utterly hated to use his words in that context. If emotional constipation was a physical condition, Dean would have been dead for over a decade now, maybe more. 

  
“God, this sucks,” Ramon said. 

“Yeah it does,” Dean agreed. 

“Are you gonna come by and drop off weapons at least, before you do the bar thing?”

Dean considered that a moment. “Yeah, we can drop off some stuff, but absolutely nothing you don’t know how to use. Remember what I said?”

Ramon sighed. “That gets you dead quick.”

“Right. And also, nothing that Tia will kill us for giving you.”

“Ah, man ...”

“C’mon, which would you rather face? A vampire or an angry Tia?”

Ramon’s voice became sullen. “A vampire.”

“Right. See you later, kid.” Dean hung up, and let out his own deep sigh. “We gotta get these motherfuckers ASAP.”

“Without a doubt,” Sam agreed. They still had no idea what their endgame was, what they were looking for, and how close they were to finding it. “We are not giving that kid a gun.”

“Yeah, I know. We gotta figure out something, though.”

That they did. About everything.

**

In the end, they gave him a machete, and several defensive hex bags to put around the house in strategic locations. He wanted more, but they couldn’t give it to him. There was simply too much potential for an innocent person getting hurt, or Ramon himself. He didn’t push too hard though. Ramon seemed a bit overwhelmed, but he wanted to try and do this. Sam told him he’d do fine, and checked to make sure the camera feed of the backyard was still functioning. It was. So at least he could keep an eye on the house while not there.

After that, they rendezvoused with Lyla at the motel, and told her that Hanrahan’s was most likely a demon bar, which left them out. “No it doesn’t,” she said. 

“What, we supposed to go in there as willing food?” Dean snapped.

“You don’t smell perfectly human.”

Dean looked genuinely surprised by that. “What?”

“I mean, it’s at the end of your scent trail. It’s like human, and then there’s this ... weird note. Have you been cursed recently?”

Oh. Sam knew instantly what this was. “The Mark of Cain.”

It was Lyla’s turned to be surprised. Her brown eyes widened, and Sam belatedly realized he’d almost never seen an expression on her face that wasn’t related to anger or contempt. She pointed at Dean. “He’s been cursed with the Mark of Cain? How in the fuck was that witch almost able to kill you?”

“I don’t have it anymore,” Dean said. “I had it. Past tense.”

That seemed to settle her, but Sam could see questions in her eyes, like how he got rid of it. Why didn't she ask? “You can still smell it on you, at least a little bit. We can play with that ambiguity.”

“What do you mean?”

“If they ask, you’re a human tainted with the Mark of Cain.”

Sam shook his head. “Can’t be done. He doesn’t have the Mark anymore.”

“We can fake that,” Dean said. “I lived with it long enough I can probably draw it with my eyes closed.”

Sam glared at him. “What if they ask you to prove it?”

Dean shrugged. “I can fake that too.”

Lyla shook her head. “Not good enough. If we don’t want these guys to kill us, you’re going to have to act the part. Faking it isn’t an option. Can you do it or not?”

Dean’s jaw set, and his eyes seemed to harden like stone. “Of course I can.”

Sam had a bad feeling about all of this. 


	9. Public Housing

**_ 9 - Public Housing _ **

Sam was giving him the look. That “you stupid motherfucker” look that honestly Sam should have slapped a patent on, in case anyone else wanted to throw him that look too. And quite a few had, so Sam was just leaving money on the table. He thought he taught him better than that. 

“Can I talk with my brother a moment? ” Dean said.

Lyla shrugged. “Why would I care?” They stared at her until she realized, “Oh, I’m supposed to leave?” She rolled her eyes, but stepped outside. 

As soon as the door was shut, Sam pounced. “You know this a trap, right? You cannot bluff having the Mark of Cain.”

“I can. I lived with it long enough.” 

  
“Don’t you get what this is? Divide and conquer. You’re in the bar, up to your ass in demons, and I’ll be facing who knows what outside.”

Dean knew it would upset him more, but he couldn’t help but shrug. “Won’t be the first time. We should be able to do this in our sleep.”

Man, Sam's face was going to stick that way if he giving him the stupid motherfucker look. “Getting ourselves killed doesn’t solve this.”

“Neither does sitting and waiting for something to happen. If we can get a line on who’s behind all this, I say we take the risk.”

“You always say we take the risk, and look where that’s gotten us.”

Ouch. Dean was no longer sure if he deserved that or not. Probably. “So what’s your alternate plan?”

Now he got the look twice as hard, and Dean knew why. Sam didn’t have a plan B - he simply hated plan A. Part of him wanted to get mad at Sam, but the other half of him got it. This sucked. “Dude, look, I know. This sounds like a suicide mission. But how many of those have we lived through? We can do this. And more to the point, we have to do this. If we want the killing to stop, this is the next move. Yeah, it eats, and we’ll probably get our asses kicked, but it’s worth it if we get the evil piece of shit behind it all. You with me or what?”

It was amazing that his teenage pout was still perfectly intact, despite all the years. Some things didn’t age. “You keep your phone on and open so I can hear everything going on in the bar.”

Dean nodded. “Easy enough.” He went to the door, and peeked his head out. Lyla was leaning against a stranger’s car in the parking lot, arms crossed, scowling at nothing. She did notice him. “Oh good, are you two finished with your bullshit?”

“We’re the Winchesters. We’re never finished with our bullshit. But yeah, come on in.”

She sighed, and pushed herself off the car. Dean wondered how far Lyla was going to carry this cooperative act. What was her endgame? If it was revenge, he could get that. But there was something so slippery about her. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was after more, although he couldn’t guess what that would be.

For the moment, the rest was just working out the finer details. Lyla didn’t want Sam right outside the bar, as someone might put it together, so Sam reluctantly agreed to wait a block over. Neither of them mentioned the open phone line, so Lyla had no idea he’d be listening. At least that was one trick they had up their sleeves. If it made any difference was a question yet to be answered. 

They headed out, and stuck to the meager plan. Lyla wanted to take the lead, and Dean was more than happy to let her. He was trying to get back into that psychopathic Mark headspace. Care about nothing; live to see the world burn. He could do it, but he didn’t like it. 

Hanrahan’s was dark and cramped, and smelled of beer and sulfur, which was pretty much what he expected. There were no windows, as windows and demon bars didn’t go together. Dean had no idea why. No witnesses?

Everybody turned to look at them as they came in. Scratch that - they turned to look at him, the one that didn’t smell right. They seemed happy to ignore Lyla, which was the opposite of what usually happened in such a sausage fest of a bar. 

Dean met their gazes with glares. The Mark wasn’t afraid of anything. In fact, it would look forward to such a lopsided fight, just so it could show off. 

Lyla went up to the scarred wooden bar, and the bartender came down. His muscles had muscles; his arms were as large as one of Dean’s legs. It was clearly gym muscles, which were limited in their usefulness, but still, when you got to a certain size, that was going to impact the fight. He had a bullet-shaped head, shaved clean, so you could see the snake tattooed on his scalp. Basically, he looked like he could chew on tinfoil and spit out nails. Probably a good choice for a demon bar. 

Lyla played it cool. “You Liam?”

“Who’s asking?” he replied. 

“Ferdinand,” Lyla said, giving the code. 

Liam looked between the two of them, and Dean tried to look as bored as possible. Whenever the Mark wasn’t doing something evil, it got bored fast. 

Liam let out a grunt of annoyance, and hit a button under the bar. One of the walls suddenly slid open, revealing a black hole of a space. Anything could be in there, and probably was. Lyla took point and he followed, still feeling the eyes of the entire bar on him. In the doorway, he turned and waved at them, as the door slid shut behind them. Yeah, that was a Mark move, but also, he kind of enjoyed it as well. He might pay for it, but that was a later problem. 

The dark entryway gave way to a poorly lit back office, where a broken-down desk and chair were the only traditional furniture. The unconventional furniture were the cases of booze piled up against the walls. 

Behind the desk was a man with thinning dark hair and an ill-fitting suit that was either really cheap or really expensive - for whatever reason, the extremes got mixed up easily. He was pouring decent whiskey into a glass, and he looked rumpled and tired. “So you’re Tony’s friends?” he asked, capping the whiskey. Of course he didn’t offer them any. 

“Yeah. You know the fuckers that killed him?” Lyla replied, anger in her voice. She was a very convincing actress, but of course she would be - shapeshifter. She had to pretend to be someone else all the time. 

The man shook his head, and shotgunned his whiskey. How could he do that? You only shotgunned the cheap stuff that tasted like shoe polish. The better stuff was too damn good for that. Damn it, he hated this guy already. “Nah, just some hunters. Who gives a shit?”

“I do,” she insisted.

He studied her a moment, and shrugged, “Well, if you wanna track ‘em down, that’s up to you. But I thought you were looking for work.”

“Depends on the work.”She crossed her arms over her chest, expression slipping down into what was best described as resting disembowelment face. 

  
The man waved his empty glass around. “We need part of this city cleaned out of the trash. You know, homeless, beggars, hookers, that sort of thing. Everything from 15 th to 8 th . All you can eat.”

“And what’s the pay off?” Dean asked. The Mark didn’t give a shit about money really, but it didn’t like feeling like it was being taken advantage of either.

The man held his gaze for a long time. This was Dean’s first tip-off he wasn’t human. “You smell weird. What’s your story?”

“Ever heard of the Mark of Cain?”

The man scoffed. “Bullshit.”

Dean pushed up his sleeve, revealing the Mark drawn on his arm in permanent ink. No, it didn’t have the burned on look of the real one, but he was counting on most people never having seen it in the wild. After all, many of the witnesses to it were dead. 

The man - Vincent? Victor? - leaned forward, and stared at it a moment. “Holy shit. How did that happen?”

Dean let his arm fall at his side, dragging the sleeve down with it. “This stupid human piece of shit wanted to kill a Knight of Hell, and didn’t look at the fine print on the contract.”

“Yeah, humans ain’t the brightest,” the man agreed, pulling on his tie. “Base rate is a thousand, but will go up if you bring us in a few extra heads.”

“Literally or figuratively?” Lyla wondered.

“Literally,” he said. 

The temptation to stab this bastard in the face was overwhelming. Was he too much in the Mark’s headspace? Or was he just one of those guys that seemed to be afflicted with anti-charm, some sort of miraculous ability to make people hate you at first sight? Dean honestly wasn’t sure. 

“Why?” Lyla asked. “Wouldn’t it be cheaper to burn the city down?”

“No, we wanna preserve some of the real estate. It ain’t all bad.” Dean was finding new levels of hate with this guy every time he opened his stupid mouth. He wanted to smash up his desk and make him eat it, piece by piece. 

“So that’s it?” Dean asked. “We just go out, start killing, and come back for our checks?”

He sat forward again, and his chair creaked loudly, like a tomb door opening. As foreshadowing went, it wasn’t subtle. “Well, we do like to vet people if we haven’t met them before.” There was a noise, like something being dragged, and the man got up and went to stand in the farthest corner away from them. 

He shared a look with Lyla, making sure they were on the same page, and they turned to find two men had come in through a secret door. They were big meatheads, possibly relatives of the bartender, and they had barely faced them before they were thrown against the wall, obliterating Vincent/Victor’s desk on their way. 

Dean hit the wall back first, which briefly winded him. And oh yeah, it hurt like a bitch. But he had to remain in Mark headspace and not lose character. The Mark wouldn’t care if its vessel was hurt or not. The Mark would see this as a love tap, if it even noticed it at all.

He forced himself to swallow it, and stood up, grinning like someone straight out of Arkham Asylum. “That the best you got? I was hoping for more foreplay.” Dean lunged towards the guy, but at the last second, pulled back. The guy, picking up on Dean’s terrible move, threw a roundhouse punch. Dean felt the wind of it going by his face, but it was a clean miss that set him slightly off balance. 

That’s when Dean moved. He stepped into the guy, grabbing his meaty arm, and stomped down on his knee. Something cracked, and the guy roared, flinging Dean across the room. This time he was ready for it, and managed to take the impact on his shoulder. Yeah, it still hurt, but it was easier to ignore.

Lyla was simply beating the everliving shit out of her guy. He was already on his knees as she jackhammered punches into his face, threatening to shatter his skull with her bare hands. They probably weren't ready for a super-strong shapeshifter, but who was?

Dean’s dance partner came roaring back, swinging wildly, and after an attempted punch he ducked under, he felt the slightest unexpected tug on his hair. A quick glance showed a bony spike had shot out from under his wrist. Oh, great, a wraith. Were illegal weapons allowed in the ring?

But then again, Dean had faced that before. And he knew how to handle it. 

To keep from being cornered, Dean kicked the wraith in his impressively hard stomach and pushed him back, giving himself room to move off the wall, but his friend was in no mood to draw out this fight. He didn’t so much throw a punch as attempt to skewer Dean in the face, but it was telegraphed way before he did it, and Dean was ready. He ducked under, but came up fast, grabbing the man’s muscular arm and turning it against his own momentum. Using all his strength, Dean managed to shove the man’s fist into the soft area beneath his chin. His spike went into his own face, and there was a crunch as it broke through the cartilage of his nose and came out through the bridge. He hoped he didn’t wear glasses, because that wasn’t going to work for a while.

The wraith stumbled back, making a sort of choking noise of horror as blood poured down from his impaled nose. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to bring a knife to a fistfight?” Dean said, pasting on the deranged grin of every evil motherfucker he’d ever encountered before. 

The wraith yanked his spike out of himself, but as he stabbed at Dean, Dean caught it. It was slick with blood, but it still wasn’t that hard to pull on the weak point, and shatter it with a palm strike. Now he howled in pain, blood pumping through the severed appendage, and Dean brought up the shattered piece of spike and stabbed him in the chest with it. None of this would kill the wraith, but it would be very clear who won this battle. “Stay down, or I’ll stab out your eyes,” Dean said, as the wraith hit the far wall and slid down it, reaching for the spike in his chest. He got his fingers on it, but was in no hurry to pull it out. 

Dean had no idea when Lyla ended her fight. Her wraith was basically hamburger in a large pool of blood on the floor. If he wasn’t dead, he was probably wishing he was with what little sense he had left. She was standing out of the way, arms crossed, resting disemboweling face back on, her hands red with blood.

Dean felt almost lost in character now. The Mark wouldn’t take this. It wouldn’t even consider it acceptable, considering how powerful it was. The Mark would be offended. 

Somehow, the whiskey bottle survived the destruction of the desk. As he stomped over to Vincent/Victor, he scooped it up, and the man didn’t seem to expect Dean coming right towards him, getting in his space, and shattering the bottle right beside his head. He yelped and cringed as flying shards cut his face, and Dean pushed the jagged neck of the bottle right into his eye line. “You do not test me, little man,” he snarled, the urge to shove the bottleneck into his eye socket almost overwhelming. “I am not your puppet. I am the Mark and I deserve respect.”

“Dean,” Lyla said. She sounded concerned. “We won. Back off.”

“Not until this little pissant learns some manners.” He attempted to move his head away, and Dean placed the glass against his cheek, puncturing it. He didn’t push it in, it was barely a scrape, but Dean saw panic flare in his eyes. He wasn’t used to getting his hands dirty, or getting hurt. Tony had been right - he was a middle man, a nobody, a Smithers doing someone else’s bidding. The more he cringed, the more Dean wanted to drive the bottle’s neck in deeper.

He had fragile eyelashes. Dean was close enough that he could pick out individual blood vessels in the whites of his eyes. He could imagine popping them with the slightest piece of jagged glass. Dean was willing to bet this guy was a real screamer. Those deep from the diaphragm howls you could hear for blocks. 

“Dean,” Lyla repeated. She sounded even more concerned this time. 

“Wh.. what do you want?” he asked, his voice going up an octave. Dean could smell the fear on him now, and it was remarkable how much fear smelled like piss. 

Yes, what did he want? The Mark would kill him. Cut his throat and leave him to bleed out on the floor beside his thugs. It could offer him nothing besides a painful, amusing death. 

No.  _ No.  _ He wasn’t the Mark anymore. He was acting and he had gone too deep. He needed to pull back now. The problem was, Dean wasn’t sure how he got here, or how to get out. 

“I want to peel your skin off,” he finally said. “But you’re not worth the time.” He threw the bottle shard down, and it felt like a tremendous act of will. That shouldn’t have been so hard. Why was it? 

He stepped back, and Vincent/Victor sighed so hard with relief it looked like he had partially deflated. Dean turned to see Lyla looking at him with ... fear? Really? Lady Macbeth was going to judge him now?

Dean felt this bone-deep shudder threatening to erupt out of him, but he managed to hold it back. He didn’t know how long that would last. He was glad his arms were covered, because he could feel gooseflesh breaking out all over. 

Since he didn’t know how long he was going to be able to hold it together, Dean headed out the door, and back into the bar, where the eyes met him again. But just as quickly, they all looked away. Dean wondered why, until he noticed Lyla wasn’t the only one wearing the spoils of victory. He had blood on his hands, his shirt, and he could feel some getting cold and sticky on his face. It was only when he noticed some blood dripping that he realized he had a cut on his palm, most likely from when he had broken the wraith’s spike. He hadn’t felt it. 

It was all he could do not to run out of the bar. The air outside was unseasonably stuffy, warning that a storm was coming in. Dean leaned over and put his hands on his knees, and attempted to ride out the nausea. 

Lyla followed him out, and grabbed him hard by the arm, pulling him into the alley beside the bar. “What the fuck was that?” she said in a low, angry whisper. 

Dean saw someone approaching from the other end of the alley, but even in silhouette, he recognized Sam. Oh shit. He heard it all, didn’t he? Dean still had the open phone in his pocket. Fuck. 

Dean was pretty sure he wasn’t going to vomit and pass out - which, honestly, should have been the other way around if life was fair at all - so he closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. Oh God, this sucked so much. 

Lyla was still whisper ranting at him, but he easily tuned her out. It wasn’t that Dean didn’t know he had a very dark place in him - he’d been a torturer in Hell, right? He knew - it was just horrible to realize it had resonated with the Mark so much. About half of the shit he blamed on the Mark was just him, wasn’t it? That murderous, swampy place in his mind he didn’t like to acknowledge in any way, shape, or form. The monster in him. He’d kind of always known he was one, didn’t he? You didn’t grow up like he did, survive what he had, without being some kind of abomination. 

“Back off,” Sam said to Lyla, as he joined their cheerful little party. He was the only one not wearing blood. 

“Back off? He’s a fucking time bomb! How could you not tell me that?”

“He’s not a time bomb,” Sam said. Sam lied. He had to know, right? “He was possessed by the Mark for years. Tapping into it was going to have consequences.”

“Consequences? His little American Psycho act blew this for us! We have no line to the boss now.”

“Please stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Dean said, as soon as he was sure he could speak. Screaming and crying had been on the table, and honestly still were. But he’d kind of like to be alone for either of those. The shudder had hit, but he was sure it was too dark for anyone to see. 

Lyla glared at him. “You’re not here. I have no fucking clue who you are right now.”

“Says the shifter who beat a wraith to death with her bare hands,” Dean snapped. He was not taking this shit from her.

“You what?” Sam said, looking at Lyla and taking a step back. Was it even possible to beat a wraith to death? Dean had no idea, but if anyone could, it was Lyla.

“He isn’t dead,” she shot back. “He’s just gonna take a long time to heal, so at least he’s off our radar.”

“And I didn’t hurt the middleman either,” Dean said. Okay, he had a couple of glass cuts, and the shallow jab in the cheek. Horrible to look at, but not that damaging. Facial wounds bled a lot, but were rarely serious, unless you went after the eyes. 

She didn’t look remotely placated. “You literally scared the piss out of him. This is ... fuck it.” She threw her hands up in the air, and turned, skulking down the alley. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Sam asked.

She turned around, and flipped them both a middle finger. “You know, I didn’t get the Winchester hype at all. You’re just sad little daddy’s boys. But now I get it. He’s the attack dog, and you’re the handler. So put a leash on him, Sam, and drag him home.”

“Fuck you,” Dean spat. It was not the first time someone had called him an attack dog, but it hurt every goddamn time. “Why don’t you tell us who you really are, blue balls?”

That hit home. She stopped, and stared death at him through narrowed eyes. “I’ve told you who I am, unlike you.”

“You really haven’t,” Sam said. He was still looking at Dean out of the corner of his eye, and Dean saw he had that little worried vein that popped out on his forehead when he was about to have an anxiety snit. Fuck.  


She’d opened her mouth to insult Sam when her phone hummed. With an impatient huff, she pulled it out. “What?” she snapped.

All the anger in her expression drained away. You could almost trace its descent, from her forehead to the base of her neck. After several seconds, she said in a low, quiet voice. “Okay.”

After she hung up, she sighed heavily and shoved her phone back in her pocket. “Well, congratulations, Cujo. You did it.”

Dean really didn’t like being called Cujo. Who knew the attack dog insult got worse? “Did what?”

“The big boss wants to meet you.”

Well, at least something good came out of this shitty situation. Dean was going to try and concentrate on that. 


	10. Governed By Contagions

_** 10 - Governed By Contagions ** _

They were set to head to Seattle tomorrow afternoon, to meet the big guy, whoever he was. Lyla claimed not to have a name, and said they’d text her a location tomorrow. Dean felt she was telling the truth, if only because she looked so defeated. She hadn’t wanted this to work, or at least not like this. 

They split up, with Lyla eager to abandoned them, and Sam looking concerned at him, which Dean couldn’t stand. He started walking off towards the Impala, and Sam followed. “What the hell happened in there?”

Dean didn’t want to talk about this. He wanted to park himself somewhere quiet, and drink until he could no longer form complete sentences in his head. “You heard it.”

“I don’t know what I heard. Are you all right?” 

“Fine.” Dean balled his right hand into a fist, and hoped Sam didn’t notice the fresh blood. 

“I meant physically. But -“

Dean turned, and said, “Can we not?”

Sam stopped and stared. It wasn’t an angry stare, but a curious one. Like maybe Dean had just grown a second head. “Dean, this isn’t healthy. You -“

“I said no,” he replied, resuming his march to the car. 

Sam let him have it, at least for now, as he was quiet as they returned to the Impala. Sam immediately went for the driver’s seat, and that annoyed him. What, did he think he was going to drive off a bridge? Dean was almost mad about this, and then he remembered he didn’t want to be mad. About this, or anything right now. He couldn’t trust himself. He had this sick feeling in his gut that maybe Lyla was right, and he was a time bomb. 

Being quiet and settled for a couple of minutes had an unfortunate side effect, in that every ache and pain adrenaline had neutralized was coming back twice as hard. He wasn’t really the Mark anymore, and he couldn’t shrug off pain. His shoulder was starting to throb, and he had a very specific ache in his back. Probably a bone bruise, but those fucking sucked. Still, he was looking forward to drinking it all away, at least for a night. He rested his head against the passenger window, and enjoyed its coolness. 

  
The silence stretched like taffy, and Dean began to dread when it would stop. It was coming soon. It had to be. 

Finally, it broke. “That wasn’t you,” Sam said.

Dean would have laughed, but it felt like it would take too much energy. “No, the problem is it is me. One hundred percent. Mark free, and still a fucking sadist.”

“You know that’s a lie. It’s trauma.”

He had already told himself he wasn’t engaging, he was too tired to do so, but he hadn’t expected this. “What?”

  
“You remember how I was when I got those Hell memories back, and I had to deal with Lucifer being in my head all the time? When you share your body with a monster ... there’s no words for how much that fucks you up. You learn ways to cope with it, because you have to if you want any part of you to come out intact, but it makes inroads into you you don’t expect. It finds weak parts, and starts slowly wearing them down, until your weak point and it seem to be the same thing. You didn’t get rid of the Mark all that long ago. The wound’s still gotta be fresh, whether you acknowledge it or not. It wanted you to think you and it were the same, but you’re not and never have been.” At a stoplight, Sam turned to look at him. “I met the Mark. I talked with it, had it try to kill me, the whole goddamn thing, and you know what? It was never you. I never saw a single piece of you in there. It was like something else was wearing your skin, because that’s exactly what was happening. You’re a victim, Dean, not a monster.” 

The light had turned, so Sam was focused on the road again. Dean considered everything he said. It couldn’t be that easy. He knew himself, he knew what he’d done and what he’d felt. He wished it was that simple, but he didn’t think it was. 

“The Mark is gone,” Sam said. “Stop helping it beat you up in absentia.”

Dean stared at him. “I’ve never heard anyone use that word in real life.”

“Shut up.”

“Are you one hundred percent sure you’re pronouncing it right?”

Sam gave him a cutting glance, but for some reason, it kind of cheered Dean up. Nice to know he could still get under Sam’s skin by nitpicking his vocabulary.”Do you really want me to push you out of this car?”

“I’d like to see you try.”

By the time they got back to the motel, Dean hoped Sam wasn’t as worried about him as he had been at first. Dean was still convinced he was a monster in human form, but he was trying not to project it. He went to clean up in the bathroom, and saw the blood splattered across his face. It was wraith blood, so he tried to convince himself it wasn’t that bad. He finally got to put a bandage on his hand wound as well, and surreptitiously down a painkiller. When Sam left to get some food, Dean decided to go out and hit a human bar, that was only a little ways up the street. They weren’t in the best part of town, which was probably on the waterfront somewhere, somewhere they’d probably never go.

The bar was dingy and poorly lit, but it had a window, so that was something. He could barely hear music in the background, sounded kind of Top 40-ish, and the bartender was one of those reliable types with a beer gut and a face that just invited you to never talk to him again. After a couple of cheap whiskeys, the pain in his shoulder and back started melting away. The self-loathing was still there, but he had lived with that for ages. It ebbed and flowed depending on many things, but tonight it was cresting. 

He was on drink three when Sam sat on the stool beside him. “Am I invited to this pity party?” he asked, his tone light. It was a signal that he was going to let this go for now, and Dean was kind of grateful.

“There’s not enough room. My ego takes up a lot of space.”

“Don’t I know it.” He flashed him a snarky smile, and ordered a craft beer from the bartender. He eyed them both with great suspicion, but he served the drinks without comment and left, which meant Dean was going to leave him a big tip. 

They sat in silence for over a minute, before Sam said, “The double-cross didn’t happen.”

“No it didn’t.” Dean had been wondering about that. Had his slipping into the Mark’s personality thrown off Lyla’s plans?

“Are we wrong about her?” 

“We can’t get comfortable with that. Maybe she wants to take us to the big boss and flip on us there.”

“Or she genuinely has her own reasons for going after him or her.”

Dean shrugged. “She doesn’t need us to do that. She’s got that Hulk thing. She could chew up monsters like a buzzsaw.” 

“She could, but everything about her seems weird.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Sam was correct. Lyla didn’t make complete sense, no matter what angle you viewed her from. “I guess we don’t have too long to wonder, do we? Tomorrow, we may finally get some answers.”

“Let’s hope we live through it,” Sam said. 

Admittedly, not the most inspiring slogan. But it had been theirs for years, and why stop using it now?

**

Dean had drank himself into a relatively comfortable sleep, but his shoulder was still a bit rusty. He figured once the adrenaline kicked in, he’d be fine. Or dead, and nothing hurt when you were dead. That was its main positive. Of course, if you went to Hell, there’d be a shitton of pain, but that was another story. 

He half expected Lyla wouldn’t show up, but she did, and she didn’t look happy. She did look good though, as she was in form-fitting pants and a top that clung to her just as neatly, but Dean suspected it was an outfit made for fighting. Little drag, hardly anything to grab on to, it was relatively sexy and yet perfectly functional. Sort of like a modern Emma Peel look, and Dean had a nice moment remembering Emma Peel. But then he came back to reality, and Lyla’s disdainful looks. “Okay, if we’re going to do this, I need you guys to be perfectly honest with me. Do you both have hidden personalities, or things that could hamstring us in a fight?”

He and Sam shared a look, the _this is bullshit_ look, and Sam replied, “I’m pretty tired this morning.”

At least this time, Sam got the double-barrelled death glare. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“My shoulder’s a little sore,” Dean added.

“Look Cujo -“

“Say that again, and I’m throwing you in the trunk.”

She looked neither amused or impressed. “Fine, Mr. Hyde. Or are you Doctor Jekyll right now? You look pretty much the same.”

“Oh good, I’m right on time,” Ramon said, walking up to their little group. He clapped his hands together, and asked, “So what’s on the agenda today?”

Sam cut an accusatory glance in his direction. “I didn’t call him,” Dean protested.

“He didn’t,” Ramon confirmed. He was in jeans and a t-shirt for a band - ? - called Gaytheist, but as a fighting look went, it was okay. Not as good as Lyla’s, but no one looked as good as her, even with that dead tree tattoo crawling up the side of her neck.  “None of you did. But you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Sam had called him last night, to check in and make sure he was okay. He was, although a little bored, as all night guard duty could be tedious. Sam hadn’t let on they had a lead on the boss. This was just bad timing on Ramon’s part.

But, Dean had made him a promise. A promise that could get him killed, but still. “We’re going up to Seattle.”

“Cool. Count me in.”

“Have you ever been in a fight?” Lyla asked. 

“Yeah, actually I have. Also, I shot some of those headless things.”

She looked confused. “Headless things?”

“Akepheloi,” Sam said. She continued staring at him blankly. “They’re a monster. Look them up.”

She shook her head. “Don’t care. This isn’t a job for a kid.”

Ramon scowled deeply. “Kid or not, my friends have been killed by these motherfuckers. I shouldn’t have to push for my right to get a piece of their ass for this.”

“Revenge isn’t often as satisfying as you hope,” Sam told him. 

Dean knew that, but also, sometimes it was a little bit satisfying. Like, putting a bullet in the head of Azazel still gave him a warm feeling, even after all these years. “This is going to be hard, and this is going to be bloody. You could die. Are you really cool with that?”

Ramon met his gaze with no hesitation. “Dude, you’ve just described my entire life. At least this time, I’ll have a say in how things turn out.”

It wasn’t like Ramon to share his history, and they didn’t push. But they knew he’d been abused, and still wore physical and emotional scars from it. Life was a fight for some right out of the gate. The fact that he was clean and trying to help other people was an indicator of how strong he was. Dean didn’t want him to get killed, but he also knew Ramon would find a way to get there, whether they allowed him to or not. At least this way, they had a chance of keeping an eye on him. “If we do, you hafta do what we say when we say it. No arguing. Got it?”

He nodded. “One hundred percent. You guys are the experts at this.”

“You can stay with me,” Sam said. “They have an invite through the front door,” he said, gesturing to Dean and Lyla. “We’re probably going to have to find an alternate way in.” 

Ramon nodded. “Okay, cool. I’m usually pretty good at sneaking into places where I’m not supposed to be.”

“Me too,” Sam replied dryly. He got in the car, the passenger seat this time, and Ramon hopped in the back like an eager kid. Previous to Lyla’s and Ramon’s arrival, they had sorted out what weapons they were going to take. Both he and Sam had guns with silver ammunition, just in case Lyla went off on them, and Dean had Ruby’s knife, while Sam had an angel blade. On the off chance of vampires, they had dead men’s blood, and some holy water in case demons showed. Dean also had a spare knife and gun, because you never knew, and you might as well be prepared for it. Not only didn’t they know who - or what - they were facing, but how many as well. Sam said he had a few ideas on how to thin out potential crowds, and Dean was good with that. He had his weapons, and Sam had his plans. In general, they usually made it work. 

Lyla rolled her eyes. “This is going to be a disaster.”

“That’s actually what we’re experts at,” Dean replied. “Disasters.”

Lyla sighed heavily, and got in the backseat. “I already guessed that, Jekyll.”

He didn’t like this new nickname she’d given him, but Dean had to admit, it was a hell of a lot better than Cujo.


	11. Tomorrow Is A Trap

**_ 11 - Tomorrow Is A Trap _ **

**__ **

It was a long drive up to Seattle - a longer drive thanks to traffic - and they did a little discussion of strategy. From the address that Lyla was texted, Sam figured out they were going to a skyscraper in the middle of downtown.

Of all the places they thought they’d be ambushed, that hadn’t crossed Dean’s mind. Had he guessed it was at the waterfront? Something like that. A nice quiet spot where it was easy to get rid of the bodies. A skyscraper, especially if full of people, seemed to open up many logistical problems. For instance, collateral damage was now an issue. Also, someone calling the police because there seemed to be violence going on. Yeah, this could go bad in dozens of ways, and he could imagine all of them. A quick glance at Sam showed he was thinking the same thing. 

“There’s no way in fucking hell they just wanna talk, is there?” Dean wondered. The idea was bananas, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.

Lyla shrugged. “I have no idea what any of them are thinking. I just know they were impressed the Mark of Cain would saunter into their joint.”

“Yeah, who wouldn’t want that power on their team?” Dean said, feeling a familiar burn in his gut. Everybody wanted the power, but no one realized it was like trying to wrestle a lightning bolt until it was too damn late. Some power couldn’t be controlled, or even contained. Some power simply destroyed everything in its path. Even the stupid bastard trying to wield it. 

“That’s when you became that maniac, right?” Ramon asked. 

Dean almost laughed. He thought Ramon had never seen him when the Mark took over, but in retrospect, he probably had. “Yeah.”

“But that’s not true anymore?”

“No. He’s still a maniac,” Lyla said. 

Dean sighed, and looked at her in the rearview. “You’re really going to make me say it takes one to know one, aren’t you?”

She scowled and gave him the finger, but rather than be annoyed with her, he suddenly realized he recognized Lyla. Not as who she was, but what she was doing. This sour, prickly act was just to keep everyone at bay, so she couldn’t get hurt. She wore it like the tattoo on her neck. And he recognized it, because sometimes he did it too. The fact that they were more alike than they realized must have bummed her out. Dean felt a little sympathy for her, but not too much, because the possibility of her betraying them was still on the table. 

It was hard to imagine her getting hurt, but it probably wasn’t physical. The worst wounds never were.

Ramon turned to impale Lyla with a scrutinizing stare.“So that’s your thing, huh? Just be a complete dick to everyone?”

Sam quickly rubbed his face to hide his smile. 

She returned his stare. “Back off, kid.”

“Being an asshole isn’t a substitute for a personality,” Ramon said.

Sam was still hiding his face, but Dean knew he was laughing now.

“Being a sassy gay stereotype isn’t a substitute for a personality either,” she replied.

Ooh. Dean knew he should probably stop this, but to be brutally honest, he was kind of enjoying it. “I’m not sassy, I’m insightful,” Ramon replied. “But thanks for admitting you see me as a stereotype.”

“Kids, behave, or I’m turning this car around,” Dean said. 

They both ignored him. “This life is going to get you killed, sooner rather than later,” Lyla said. “You’re a red shirt, and I’d be surprised if you lasted five minutes against a real monster.”

“And you're a sour cockwaffle who’ decided to lay low and not get involved with monsters picking off people one by one until they targeted one of your friends. Even though you have a clear and obvious superpower. How selfish do you have to be?”

Jesus. That cut right to the bone, and Dean could see the shock in her eyes. On the one hand, Dean was tempted to let out a Mortal Kombat style “ _ Finish her _ ”. On the other, he still felt a little bad for Lyla. That was one hundred percent true, but he wasn’t sure she thought of that in those terms. Ramon was right - he was insightful. A little too insightful, to be honest. You had to beware of those quiet people in the back of the room, because they saw everything. Especially the stuff you didn’t want them to see. 

“Okay, let’s stop this now,” Sam said. He had managed to stop laughing and smiling, probably because he recognized how devastating - and true - Ramon’s accusation was. “We’re on the same side here. Don’t forget that.”

“Also, cockwaffle?” Dean asked, looking at Ramon in the rearview. 

“We make up our own insults now,” he replied. “A new world requires new words.”

Dean couldn’t argue with that. In fact, it sounded like fun. He was going to have to try that later, assuming there was a later.

The rest of the trip was done in frosty silence, but that was better than open warfare. They needed to save their energy for what was to come. 

Seattle was more densely populated than Tacoma, and it didn’t have the steep hills either. Well, maybe a couple on the outskirts, but not downtown. The real drawback to this was parking was impossible. The skyscraper that was their destination had a parking garage, but it was weirdly full. When he finally did find a spot on the second level, Dean wondered aloud, “How many people are we gonna be facing? The entire Persian army?”

“This is Seattle,” Ramon said. “People will park anywhere, especially in places they shouldn’t. This is probably all people from up and down the block.”

Since he was the local, Dean took his word for it. He and Lyla got out of the car, while Sam and Ramon remained inside, as they had to wait before attempting to follow them. Dean checked his phone to make sure it was on and open, so Sam could hear if they needed emergency backup. 

Lyla got a notice on her phone as they walked towards the elevator. “We’re going up to the penthouse,” she said.

“Fancy.” He tried to figure out a penthouse/Penthouse joke, and couldn’t, so he abandoned it.

The elevator was fairly new, a sleek tube marred by beige carpets. Layla hit the appropriate button as the doors slid closed. 

The silence was weird, especially since it was a long trip up. Dean found himself looking at the tree on her neck, and he came to a surprising realization. “What?” she snapped, catching him staring.  


“You’re the reason your family tree is dead, aren’t you?”

Anger flared in her eyes, but not soon enough to smother the fear that kicked in first. “What?”

“It’s your penance, and you’re wearing it for the world to see. I get it. Some of us have sins that won’t leave us alone.” Unconsciously, he rubbed the arm with the fake - but once real - Mark of Cain on it. “If you wanna tell the story sometime, I’m willing to listen.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. Her voice was low and cold, and she was so obviously telling a lie Dean once again felt bad for her. 

But he didn’t have time for that. He had to slide back into the toxic Mark mindset, the one that was happy to kill everyone and light the world on fire. The Mark had no pity. It had appetites and curiosities, and nothing more. 

Having never been in a penthouse office before, Dean really didn’t know what to expect when the doors slid open. It was the biggest office he had ever seen in his life, ending at humungous window walls that seemed to let in every scrap of available light. There were towering bookshelves on the side walls, the size of some of the old ones back in the bunker, only the books seemed to be grouped by color. A blue section fading to a brown section, a red section fading to green. Who shelved books in similar colors? For some reason, Dean felt really offended by that. 

A plush carpet with geometric designs woven into the threads led to a wide, ornate desk probably made out of some extinct wood. It was easily forty feet from the elevator to the desk, and the man behind it was hard to see, as he seemed to have found the one pool of shadow. “Ah, there’s the Mark of Cain,” the man said, standing up. The shadows around him obscured most of him, but he was clearly wearing a sharply tailored, expensive suit, the cost of which could've housed all the homeless in the state, with a pool of cash to spare.

As they stepped out of the elevator and into the room, Dean’s instinct told him they weren’t alone, and he saw there were a couple of huge men standing off to the sides, huge slabs of men whose actual species was currently unknown. Also, they had bulges under their jackets that indicated they were carrying guns in shoulder holsters. Dean wondered what monsters carried guns, but no one ever said they couldn’t. He clocked them out of the corners of his eyes, but didn’t dare look at them directly. The Mark wouldn’t give a shit about the bodyguards. He’d only care about the king. 

“As soon as I heard you were in town, I had to meet you. I mean, how many chances does a guy get to meet the spirit of murder? And his charming ... girlfriend?”

Lyla stiffened at the descriptor, and the Mark didn’t give a shit about that, but also, didn’t want to be lumped in with someone else. “Partner in ass-kicking.” He stopped where he was, and said, “Who the fuck are you and why I am supposed to care?”

He threw back his head and laughed, like this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. He needed a moment to gather himself, although Dean felt the wiping away of tears was pure pantomime. “Delightful. No human would dare talk to me that way. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in a bodyguard position?”

“I’d kill you the first chance I got.” Dean was aware his actual bodyguards tensed, but the man didn’t care at all. 

He continued chuckling as he walked over to a gold bar cart, full of crystal decanters and cut crystal glasses. Dean bet all the alcohol was expensive too. “So, do you drink, or is that something you no longer require?”

“I don’t require it, but I wouldn’t say no to a good scotch.”

“Excellent. And you, my dear?”

“I’m not your dear. And pass.”

“Ooh,” he said, plucking perfectly clear, square ice cubes from a silver urn, using matching silver tongs. Each cube seemed to ring like a bell inside the glasses, and Dean wondered if they had been made to do just that. Also, who waters down good scotch? But he pushed that aside, as the Mark really didn’t care, and also, they’d already established this guy was evil. “Spicy. I guess the companion of murder wouldn’t exactly be a party girl, would she?” He poured amber liquid from one of the decanters into two glasses, and as Dean watched him, he started to get the sense that this guy was familiar somehow. He wasn’t sure how as of yet, but it was gnawing at him. 

“Are you going to tell me what I’m doing here, or do I hafta beat it out of you?”

The bodyguards didn’t just tense but step forward, as if ready to close in on him, but the man waved a hand at them. “Stand down. He’d just make you eat your guns anyway.” The man picked up both glasses, but walked back towards his ornate desk. Dean could now see the legs of the desk were carved like lion’s legs, their claws digging into globe shapes on the bottom. He was ostentatious with his wealth, and he had the worst fucking taste in the world. “No, the Mark is special, and must be handled delicately.” He put one glass on the far side of the desk, then sat back in his plush black leather office chair, which seemed to be somewhat throne shaped. Really? Dean wanted more than anything to dropkick this fucker out the window, but they had no answers yet. “Come, join me. Let’s talk terms.”

“Terms for what?”

“For joining my organization, of course. You can kill as many people as you want, have official cover from any possible consequences, and I get a human-ish wrecking ball to point at my enemies. We can have a great deal of fun together, you and I.”

“I can kill everybody I want right now.” He approached the desk, feeling the bodyguards’ piercing stares. It didn’t matter what their boss had said, they were good dogs, and had been trained to act a certain way. “Why should I work with you?”

“Because it’d be a lark. Haven’t you ever wanted to run an entire city?” The man sipped his drink, and the ice clinked musically against the glass. 

Dean stepped within the pool of shadow and could make out the man now. He was very generic looking, a general every man sent from Central Casting, although his dark hair was well coifed, and undoubtedly expensive. That’s what tipped it, and reminded him of the man he’d seen in the paper. Davis Miller, CEO of LunaCorps.

Holy shit. Sarge had been right all along. 


	12. Dead Inside

_** 12 - Dead Inside ** _

Sam listened to Dean and Lyla in the elevator with one earbud in, and was surprised when Dean guessed about the tree tattoo. That hadn’t occurred to him, but now it seemed obvious. How had he missed that?

“What’cha doin’?” Ramon asked, peering at his laptop from the back seat.

“I’m trying to get into the building’s security system, but it actually has decent firewalls.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Evacuate the rest of the building, if at all possible.”

Ramon thought about it for a moment. “You got a lighter I can borrow?”

Sam dug in his pocket, and handed him one of his lighters. He always had a couple on him, in case they ran into an emergency salting and burning situation.

“Thanks,” Ramon said, and got out of the car. Sam watched as he went over to a nearby wall, and flicked the lighter beneath what looked to be a tiny box. Several seconds later, a screaming loud alarm went off, and sprinklers opened up in the parking garage. He sprinted back to the car, trying not to get wet, and failing. “Here you go,” he said, handing back the lighter. 

“Hard to beat the old fashioned way,” Sam admitted. Water was still pattering down on the windshield, and after thirty more seconds, he saw people start filtering out the emergency stairwell door. 

They watched for a bit, as the sprinklers continued pouring down, and the alarm kept screaming. About a dozen people had already left. Slow day at the office? Come to think of it, it was Saturday,wasn’t it? Weird how days could escape you, especially when you were up all night, and slept for a good part of the day. Their body clocks were all fucked up, but there was no help for it now. 

The siren made it a little harder for him to hear what was going on with Dean and Lyla, but it sounded like things were still conversational with whoever they were talking to. Definitely a man, but he couldn’t say any more for the moment. 

The sprinklers finally stopped, but the siren kept going. No more people were funneling out to their cars. “I think we’re good to go,” Sam said. 

  
“Am I going to get some weapons here or what?” Ramon asked.

Sam had thought about that. Letting Ramon go into this situation without weapons definitely more dangerous than than letting him have them. “You know how to use a gun, correct?”

“Again, American from Texas. So yes.”

Sam popped the trunk, and pulled out a spare pistol with a silver bullet clip in it. It was small, but easy to use, and definitely punched above its weight. “Can you use this one?”

Ramon took it, studying it a moment, and eased off the safety as he pointed it at the ground. “Uh huh.”

After considering it a moment - he could just imagine what Dean would say to him for doing this - Sam pulled out a spare angel blade. “This should kill any evil thing you stab it into, but use it as a last resort, okay? Knife fighting isn’t something you can improvise.” Dean had actually taught him how to knife fight. Honestly it was one of the hardest things Sam had to learn. As fighting went, it was close and nasty, with stabbing and slashing both an option on the table. Sam used to resent Dean for making him try to get it right, and then one day, it occurred to him that Dean had learned it from Dad, and how much worse was that? He’d seen occasional training sessions between Dean and Dad, and Dad was never easy on him. He came at him with adult strength and dexterity, and yet he still expected Dean to respond in kind and be able to hold his own. In retrospect, it had probably crossed the line into child abuse, even though Dad was trying to get Dean ready for when the monster floodgates would open, and Dad wouldn’t be around anymore. Intentions meant little when the end result was so bad. But at least Sam knew he could hold his own in a knife fight. Dean was probably a bit better, but for all the wrong reasons. 

“I bet.” He took the blade, and stared at it a moment. “Is this silver?”

“No. It’s ... a long story.” He didn’t need to know the weird metal properties of angel blades, which, as far as Sam could tell, were not made from any known Earth metal. But it looked silver, so, good enough. 

Sam pulled out the backpack he and Dean had put together back at the motel, and shouldered it before heading towards the elevator. 

Sam had heard Lyla say they were going to the penthouse, so when they got in the elevator - about a second before the fire alarm died - Sam hit the button for it, only to find it didn’t light up. He hit other buttons until he found a floor the elevator would take them to. Turned out to be the twentieth floor. “Okay, we may have to go up the fire stairs.”

Ramon looked between him and the elevator panel for a moment. “Does this mean they know we’re here?”

“No, it could be that the top floors are locked off unless you’re expected.”

“But they’ll have guys covering the stairs, won’t they?”

Sam glanced at him, and was impressed with his foresight. You would never know it was first official hunting mission. “Yeah, they will. I have no idea how many, or what they’ll be. You’ll have to follow my lead.”

Ramon nodded, in a way that sort of telegraphed his anxiety. He didn’t blame him. “So, uh, any idea what’s going on up there?”

In his earbud, he heard Dean and the man still talking. It sounded conversational, so things hadn’t popped off yet. “Nothing yet. We’ll have to wait until Dean drops the bug out word before we go up.”

“Bug out word? Is that like a safe word?”

Sam smirked, glad Dean wasn’t here. “No. But in a way, yes.It’s a word we can use in public that simply means run for the hills. Sometimes you can’t say that in mixed company.”

“Oh damn! I could so use something like that. Like on a bad date, somebody can say it to me, and I can escape through the bathroom window.”

Sam laughed. He’d been there. Not often, but yeah. There was Cyndi. Oh god, how had he ever forgotten about her? Even after all these years, he felt the sting of embarrassment. But shortly after that disaster, he met Jess, and ... he couldn’t think about this now. He had to keep his head in the game, and keep an eye out for Ramon as well. Regretting time could wait until this was over. 

Sam was braced for potential company on the twentieth floor, but the elevator doors opened on an empty hallway. He put a finger to his lips as a warning to Ramon before easing out his gun and carefully checking both sides of the corridor. All Sam saw was empty, half lit cubicles. Nobody was working this weekend, or they cleared out with the fire alarm.

Ramon stood at the elevator door, holding it open. When Sam waved him on, he joined him in the hall. He said nothing, he had his gun out and simply waited to follow Sam. Which was great, but also? A terrible sign he was adapting to the whole hunter thing. Sam really didn’t want him to. Having Claire do it was bad enough. It would eat their lives, and if they were lucky to live past their mid-thirties, it would wear on them until they were emotionally numb most of the time. Not that he was projecting, but ... yeah, okay, he was projecting. 

They moved quickly and quietly to the emergency stairwell door, and Sam briefly put his ear up to it. He couldn’t hear anyone nearby, so they were okay for now. Sam put his backpack on the floor, and crouched down to unzip it. “What’s in there?” Ramon asked, in hasty whisper.

“Our edge,” Sam said. 

He waited and listened in his earpiece for Dean to drop the word.

**

Davis had left Dean’s scotch on the edge of his gaudy desk. He wasn’t sure why, especially since there weren’t any other chairs in the room. Why would he do this? If it was a power move, it was a weird one.

“If I wanted Tacoma, I’d have it already,” he said, picking up the glass. Dean committed the unspeakable crime of downing the scotch in two swallows, because he didn’t want the ice to melt and water it down any further. It was a really good kind too, he would have preferred to savor it. 

Davis chuckled, a smug smirk curving his thin lips. “I’m not talking about that hellhole. I’m talking about Seattle.”

That was a surprise, but Dean didn’t show it on his face. Nor did he react when an alarm started screaming through the room.

  
Davis’s expression instantly curdled. “What the hell is that?”

One of his beefy bodyguards took out his phone. “We have a fire alarm going off on the second level parking garage.”

Ha. Sam going with the classics. 

Davis rolled his eyes. “If it’s those homeless guys toking up again, have them killed.”

“Yes sir,” he said, and relayed the message to whoever was on the other end of the line.

Davis pressed a button his desk, and the alarm died in his office. “You see, the level of vermin we have to deal with here is almost as bad as it is in Tacoma. Hence my pilot project.”

“I’m not following you, and yet, I’m not sure I care,” Dean said.

Davis was deeply amused, and he got the uneasy sense that he liked him. Dean never wanted to be liked by anyone this smug and punchable. “I’m using Tacoma as my proof of concept. You can clear away the dross, and revitalize a city.”

“You didn’t clear away all the dross. There’s still people there.”

Davis chuckled. “Yeah, well, we need a few for food, after all. But we keep the better stock for that. Have you ever eaten a pampered rich guy?”

So many jokes, and Dean couldn’t say a single one. “Probably not.”

“They’re like geese fattened only for their liver. As tender and well marbled as the finest steak. Wonderful.”

“Are we talking chomping on the actual flesh? ‘Cause I’m not sure what you are.”

Davis grinned. “Aww, that hurts my feelings. The Mark of Cain doesn’t know a ghoul when he sees one?”

Of course he was a ghoul. “So did you eat the original Davis Miller?”

“Oh, no. That’s who I am. This guy -” and he gestured to his body. ”- was some fraternity bro piece of shit I ate. I figured he had the right sort of bland but tolerable tech guy energy I was looking for.”

  
“Wait,” Lyla exclaimed. She moved a little closer, but remained closer still to the bodyguard on her side of the room. “Are you telling me all the killings are about gentrification?

Dean had heard that word, but honestly wasn’t sure what it meant. He just assumed it meant homogeneous, the way cities all across the States had started looking weirdly the same over the years, until you could be at a cheap motel in Omaha, and it was the same as being in a cheap motel in California, or Connecticut. 

Davis scoffed. “Such a negative term. But essentially, yes. I mean, let’s face it - Seattle is already half way to being a haven for the wealthy alone. Tacoma is never gonna get there - let’s be honest, it’s an armpit - but if we can clean out the vermin in our pilot area, and build up the type of elite level housing and commercial units we want, it’ll be a piece of cake to do it here. And we’re well on our way. Surely you must have noticed.”

“A ghoul entrepreneur. Now I’ve seen everything,” Dean said, keeping his voice and tone level and bored. Which was difficult, because inside, he was nearly half-blind with fury. This fucking asshole. Declaring people as “vermin”, as something to be gotten rid of - murdering to make himself rich. Even if he wasn’t a ghoul, Dean would have happily killed him. He imagined shoving this nice crystal glass into his eye socket, and out the back of his head. 

“So, let’s break this down to the nitty gritty,” Davis said, settling back in his throne like chair. “What do you want?”

“To blow up this building,” Dean replied. He meant it, and yet, it was totally in character for the Mark. 

  
Davis laughed again, showing off his pristine white teeth. He had no idea ghouls could wear veneers. “Look, I know you could kill your way through the Western seaboard without breaking a sweat, but who needs that kind of attention? Besides, you can’t live on blood alone. My projected earnings for the Tacoma project are in the upper thirty millions. Are you really telling me you don’t want a chunk of that? We’re looking to at least triple that on the Seattle project.”

“How in the hell are you monetizing killing vagrants?” Lyla asked. It was a fair question.

Davis briefly held his hands up. “Ya got me. The only money to be made there is what I can get out of feeding my people for free. The money’s all in real estate, property, storefronts. And parking. You’d be surprised how much money there is in that arena. Americans love their cars.”

No, he wouldn’t, because Dean loved his car as well. But Dean ‘s rage was straining so hard to burst out it felt like a drumbeat in his head. This asshole, this greedy motherfucker, this cheap knock off of Dick Roman. He wanted to rip off one of his arms and beat him to death with it. Sam could tell him all he wanted that he had no point of familiarity with the Mark, but Dean knew he had some, and this was proof. “Do you think I’m a whore?” Dean asked, trying his hardest to keep his anger out of his voice. He failed, but the Mark would have been offended, so that played. “Do you think you can buy me?”

He heard a slight creak on the floor, a footstep of the bodyguard getting a little closer to him. 

  
Davis seemed to realize he had crossed a line. The smile faded like an afterimage. “That is not what I meant at all, and I’m sorry if you misunderstood me. I want to cut you in. I want you as part of my team. Hell, if you want to kill everyone in the Seattle project by yourself, you are one hundred percent free to do so. And I don’t care what you do with the bodies. Throw them off the Space Needle, explode them over the Sound with homemade fireworks, I really don’t give a shit. And you can take any part of the city as your own.”

Dean pointed down at the floor. “Even here?”

Davis nodded. “It’s yours if you want it, with my compliments. Hell, you wanna staff? You can have them too.”

Had enough time passed for Sam and Ramon to be in position? He was pretty sure it had. Which was a good thing, because he wasn’t sure he could hold on to his temper much longer. “I had my heart set on a house in Poughkeepsie.”

Davis looked genuinely confused, and Dean let the silence ride.

For thirty seconds. Then all hell broke loose. 


	13. Take Down Enemies

**_ 13 - Take Down Enemies _ **

As soon as Dean dropped the word, Sam pulled the first grenade out, and gave Ramon the earplugs he brought along. Sam only put one in his ear, because he wasn’t taking out his link to the feed. 

Sam primed the grenade, opened the door, and threw it inside the stairwell, barely closing the door before it went off. Even so, he felt the tremor of the flash-bang through the floor, and his ears were ringing despite the limited exposure.

Yes, they were military issue and they shouldn’t have had them, but that was true of most of their weapons. It didn’t have much force, hence why he and Ramon could stay by the door, but what it lacked in destructive power it made up for being far too fucking loud, and far too fucking bright. Sam had seen a sliver of the light under the door, so luminous it left black smudges in his vision. Any monster in the stairwell would be in hideous pain, with busted eardrums or temporarily blinded eyes, or both. It was a vicious attack, and yet one of the few things that could instantly level the odds. The problem was, as soon as they did it, it would blow Dean and Lyla’s cover, which was why he left the decision to Dean. They’d know when was the best time to blow up everything. 

Sam shouldered the bag, and opened the stairway door, pulling out his gun instantly, in case the flash-bang missed some of them. The light was limited in scope, but the sound was not.

Immediately he found a man on the next floor landing screaming and convulsing, looking as if he was trying to claw out his own eyeballs. Sam ignored him and continued on up, checking briefly to make sure Ramon was following and ignoring him too. He was. 

He found another two on the stairs, one sitting down, head in his hands, like he was afraid if he moved too fast his brain would fall out. They passed him, and he didn’t seem to care. Number two was harder. Clearly blinded and deaf, he still wanted to fight, and Sam had expected some might react that way. Many monsters didn’t necessarily need sight or hearing to find you and kill you. Sam put a bullet in his knee, and he fell down the stairs like a bowling ball. Another one came at Ramon, but from a bad angle, and he managed to kick him down the stairs, where he collided with his friend and went down in a bloody heap.

Sam had barely gone another four steps before a big one lunged at him and managed to tackle him, throwing him into the wall. His head hit the wall and bounced, and while it wasn’t that hard, it still caused black dots to explode in front of his eyes. Sam threw a knee in his gut and when he doubled over, he slammed his elbow into the back of his head. It wasn’t hard enough to knock him out, but it put him down, and all Sam had to do then was kick him off the landing. How many bodyguards did this guy have? Sam briefly pondered the size of his payroll, and how much he must have been making if he could pay all his goons. How come bad guys always seemed to have so much money?

Well, okay, yeah, stupid question. Because the universe seemed to be inherently unfair, evil seemed to be rewarded more than good. Evil probably wouldn’t have been so attractive if it wasn’t profitable. Man, Sam was just thinking all the wrong thoughts today. He was going to psych himself out before they even reached the penthouse. 

They passed another who was down for the count, but it was about then that Sam thought he heard a noise above, and managed to duck down in time as a couple of someones on a higher floor started raining bullets down on them. They weren’t looking over to aim at them, because it would have opened them up to a headshot, but still, random bullets flying everywhere wasn’t great. 

As Sam ducked down and slid off his backpack to grab another grenade, he wondered how Dean and Lyla were doing.

**

Flash-bangs were fucking awesome. Dean really wished they had them years ago. Despite the fact that it was deployed on a lower floor, he could feel a tremble of the noise through the floor. It was like someone used a catapult to throw a to scale brass elephant at the building. Sound and light as weapons. Technology could be amazing sometimes. 

Lyla spun and grabbed the bodyguard closest to her, and simply swung around and bodily threw him at the bodyguard behind Dean. He only knew this because he heard a tremendous _ oof  _ behind him, and suddenly books were cascading down from the now broken bookshelf where the men were partially embedded now. 

Dean had taken a step towards Davis when he was gone in a blur, and suddenly reappeared farther away, back against the window, aiming a gun right at him. Goddamn ghoul super speed. He knew that was going to make this that much harder. “I thought we were on the same side here, Mark,” Davis said, still attempting to be chummy. 

Dean sighed. “You’re not stupid enough to think that gun’s gonna hurt me, do you?” Of course, it would totally hurt him, but not the Mark. And if he could bluff this guy into dropping the gun, he didn’t mind playing pretend Mark a little more. He slipped a hand into his coat pocket. Davis didn’t seem to notice. 

“Yeah, I get that, but it’s hard to maneuver in a body with damaged legs. Trust me, I know.”

Dean nodded in agreement, as he pulled the trigger on the gun in his pocket. It hit Davis low, in the gut, and the bullet caused a spider webbing of the glass behind him. He dropped his own gun in shock. A bullet to the stomach wasn’t going to kill a ghoul, but gut wounds hurt, no matter what you were. “Having their intestines fall out trips them up too,” he said.

Davis’s stare was stark, and perhaps a bit betrayed. “Dude. I heard you were a motherfucker, but I had no idea.”

Dean was aware of the sound of a door being flung open, and the floor shaking with the entrance of several more bodyguards, but he was sure Lyla had those. That was the deal they made - he got the head honcho, she got everyone else. It was a play to both their strengths, although Lyla had rolled her eyes and said,  _ “You’re such a drama queen.”  _ Which felt like an insult? But to be brutally honest ... yeah, he had his moments. “I am the original motherfucker, Did you think the spirit of murder would be all sunshine and rainbows?”

Davis became a blur again, and Dean’s head was grabbed and rammed into the tacky desk at a genuinely worrying speed. The edge broke off, and Dean’s consciousness momentarily wavered, although the feeling of blood spilling down his face woke him up. “No, I -” Davis began, but never got a chance to finish, as Dean threw a hard elbow into his fresh bullet wound. It squelched, which was gross, but the noise Davis made was hard to describe. It was somewhere between a groan and a swallowed scream. Dean spun and threw a hard uppercut that caught him right under the chin, and sent him stumbling back towards Lyla. As soon as she saw him coming, she picked up the nearest bodyguard and slammed him right into Davis, sending him flying across the room. He hit the wall just as hard and slid down, as the  _ boom  _ of another flash-bang shook the floor. That one sounded a lot closer. 

“Don’t monologue when you’re in a vulnerable position, pal,” Dean said, looking around for a blunt object he could beat Davis’s skull in with. He could use a gun butt, but that seemed crude. “The hitwitch did that, and look what happened to her.”

Davis’s eyes were slightly glazed, as he’d taken a lot of blunt force trauma from being beaten with his own bodyguard, but he was still with it enough to say, “You killed Katie?”

“She tried to kill me first. Fair’s fair.” Dean pulled out Ruby’s knife. It was going to take a lot of strength to put it through his skull, but the blade was supernatually strong. Should work, if he could get it there. The only thing that killed a ghoul was destroying the brain or lopping the head off. He really should have brought a machete. Why didn't he? Man, the first day he decides not to overpack, and this happens.   


Davis was there, and then he was not, and Dean was thrown back into the remains of the bookshelf. Davis had him by the throat, but that just gave Dean the opening he wanted, and, using all his strength, he rammed Ruby’s knife through his ear and hilt deep into his skull. Davis stumbled back, dazed. “Oh, and I’m not the Mark of Cain. My name’s Dean Winchester.”

Suddenly Davis was shot again, the bullet hitting him in the chest and making him jerk. “You sleazy mother fucker!” Ramon, the shooter, snapped, as Sam plucked the gun from his hands. Dean honestly didn’t blame Ramon, after everything that had happened. Still, a headshot would have done a lot more damage. But he couldn’t have known he was a ghoul. That was one of the monsters they hadn’t really talked about yet. Oh wow - they had a lot of monsters to discuss. Maybe Sam was right, and he should just create some kind of pamphlet.

Davis still looked woozy, but apparently having a knife in his brain wasn’t the big problem. “What do you mean you’re not The Mark?”

Lyla came up behind him, and he seemed completely unaware. She moved very lightly for a Hulk. “It means you just got outsmarted by a human, you goddamn idiot.” She slammed her palm against the knife hilt, and it rocketed through his head and out the other side, where the blade hit the window and bounced off. Davis’s head was entirely ripped open, and as he collapsed to the floor, what was left of his brains spilled on the carpet. 

They all took a moment to catch their breath, and look around at the general carnage. Ramon stepped off to the side and vomited, which was fair. The first time Dean saw a split open head, he barfed too. It still wasn’t great. 

Dean felt blood running down his face, and now he was aware his head hurt. A tentative feel revealed torn skin on his forehead, and a slight bump that would probably become a purple-black mess in the next few hours. But it was cosmetic damage. Apparently his skull was thick enough to absorb a desk headbutt without a concussion. Good to know?

Some of the bodyguards were groaning a bit. Most were unconscious if not outright dead. Lyla had torn through them like a scythe through wheat. Dean bet it was awesome to see, and he wished he could have. Maybe Ramon filmed some of it. 

“Okay, so ... do we burn the place down?” Lyla said. 

Sam looked at her like she was crazy. “A skyscraper in downtown Seattle?”

“Well, I don’t know! I’ve never done this before! Whatever this was, exactly.”

  
“A revenge mission,” Dean said.

“A hunting trip,” Sam said, at the exact same time. 

“Instant karma,” Ramon said, a second later. 

Yeah, that sounded like the best description. But as a stream of sunlight made the blood on the floor look like crushed jewels, he wondered what story people would tell about all of this. What could they say? A CEO with a destroyed head, and at least a dozen bodyguards dead, dying, or uncooperative. 

Maybe Lyla had a point. Maybe they should burn it down. 


	14. Sunday Day 13

_** 14 - Sunday Day 13 ** _

From what they could tell, someone cleaned up after them. 

It was unsettling, and perhaps hinted at a silent partner, but there was absolutely no report on what happened at the skyscraper. The next day, Davis Miller was reported dead in a private plane crash. They all wondered who set that up and why, but Dean supposed it might be the monster world taking care of its own. All they needed was the discovery that Miller and his bodyguards weren’t exactly human to blow shit wide open. 

Dean sometimes did wonder what would happen if people knew monsters were real and all over the fucking place. He could imagine a panicky, Mad Max sort of scenario, where nobody trusted anyone and a lot of people died needlessly. And then he imagined another scenario, where no one really cared. Which one was worse? 

He and Sam couldn’t really decide which was better, so they split the hitwitch’s thirty-two hundred dollars in half, one part going to Tia, and the other going as an anonymous donation to the local homeless shelter. She had been a horrible person, but maybe her money could do some good. 

There was no getting around the fact that Dean’s head wound was ugly. It looked like he got kicked in the forehead by someone wearing a steel-toed boot. Butterfly bandages mended the cut, but everything around and beneath was the blackest shade of blue. Also, no matter how many cold beers he pressed to it, it hurt. It pulsed like an infected wound, and he so missed Cas being able to heal him. He also just missed Cas, but that felt one and the same. 

Dean also knew Sam was kind of hoping Ramon would be repulsed by all the violence, but he wasn’t. If he was going to be a hunter, Sam figured he’d need a mentor, someone to show him the ropes, and it turned out he already had one.

How did they not know Tia was a hunter too? She could have mentioned it. Ramon said she claimed she was “retired”, but how much could a hunter actually retire? Dean wondered if he’d ever live long enough to do that, or if the world would last that long. What was he without hunting? Did he even exist anymore? That question shouldn’t have been so troubling, but it was. He’d tried it once, and failed. It was like the world had been telling him no, he was nothing if he wasn’t this. But was it true? Dean didn’t know anymore. 

Maybe that’s why Dean found himself in the back of the dingy human bar down the street from their motel. He’d told Sam he wouldn’t stay out that late, but truth be told, he didn’t feel much like sleeping. Of course, the pain pill he took to numb his throbbing head might have something to say about that. But so far, no.

He was on his second whiskey when a familiar shadow loomed over his table. “Wanna say goodbye?” he asked.

Lyla sat down across the table from him, uninvited. He hadn’t seen her since they came back to Tacoma. Dean had wondered if she’d totally bailed - left the city, left the state, ran for greener pastures where other shapeshifters might not know she teamed up with some hunters.”I actually hoped you were already gone.”

Dean didn’t know what to say to that. “So, what are you here for?”

Her lips thinned as she looked down at the table, and for a second he thought she was going to get up and simply walk out. But she seemed to come to some decision, and finally looked at him. “So, you want to hear the story?”

He almost asked what story, but it was right there on the side of her neck. He’d said he would listen. “Sure.”

Her eyes gazed down at the table again, where someone had half-heartedly attempted to scratch their name into the wood, but only got as far as S. “So my mother could trace her lineage directly to the Alpha shapeshifter, which I’m told is kind of a big deal. My dad acted like we were royalty or something. But I ... I got tired of taking on other people’s looks and identities. I wanted to be me, just me. I didn’t want to hurt or kill anyone. And they thought there was something wrong with me. They warned me that if I didn’t live up to the family name, they’d ... well, they threatened a lot of things. I wasn’t sure I completely believed them.” She picked up his whiskey glass, and slugged the rest of it down.

“Hey,” he protested weakly. Honestly, she was starting to look like she needed it more than he did. Dean knew already this was not headed towards a happy ending.

She set his glass down delicately, as if not wanting to make a noise. “So I made friends with this witch, and I told her of my predicament, and she came up with a solution. See, energy does build up when you don’t shift, and it can be really difficult. She found this sigil that would basically shunt the energy in a way I would find more useful.” She rolled up her sleeve on her right arm, and there, right above the crook of her elbow, was a small circle with a complicated geometric pattern. It looked like a combination between a spider web and tentacles fanning out across the circle. “I got it tattooed on me, so I’ll always have it.”

“Smart.” So the blue balls thing wasn’t a lie exactly, she’d simply left out an important detail. “But I’m gonna guess your parents weren’t thrilled with this.”

“No.” For a moment, her eyes looked to be welling with tears, but she blinked it away so quickly, he wasn’t sure if he imagined it or not. “My father said no son of his was going to be some normie, not shifting, and ... I wasn’t used to the sigil yet. I had no idea how strong I could be.”

“You killed him,” Dean guessed. 

She nodded. “And when my mother ... she said she couldn’t allow a creature like me to live, and she tried to kill me.”

Jesus. No wonder she was so prickly and standoffish. Both her parents tried to kill her, simply because she didn’t do as she was told. “I’m gonna guess, since you’re alive, she isn’t.”

She let her eyes roam over the bar, looking at everything but him. “Yeah. Among shifters, I’m ... well, we’re not exactly a tight group. There are clans and factions within shifter communities, and it’s all byzantine and stupid. But I’m a pariah. And I don’t care about that, but ... it’s not a good feeling knowing every single one of your kind hate you.”

“I bet. I’ve kind of been there.”

Now she looked at him. She seemed doubtful, but decided to let it go. “See, this isn’t just a penance,” she said, touching her neck. “It’s a warning. I cracked the seal. I proved you don’t have to shift to live. I’m the iceberg that will sink any ship that comes after me.”

Dean smiled, liking that metaphor. “That’s a kick ass phrase. Can I use that sometime?”

She rolled her eyes, but she almost smiled. “God, you are such a weirdo.”

“I thought I was a maniac.”

She grimaced. “Yeah ... sorry about that. You really freaked me out. I’m not used to being scared by a human.”

“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult.”

She ignored his joke, but, to be fair, it wasn’t much of one. “I’m sorry for what the Mark did to you.”

He opened his mouth to say it hadn’t done anything to him, but the little Sam voice in the back of his head said,  _ “Didn’t it?” _ And Dean suddenly had no idea how to respond.

Once she noticed how awkward things were getting, she sighed and clasped her hands together. “So, that’s me. A parent killer hated by all shapeshifters. Is it what you imagined?”

“No. Were we what you imagined as hunters?”

“Oh hell no. I assumed you were more organized.”

Dean scoffed, imaging how Sam would reply to that. “We have our good days and our bad days.”

“Don’t we all?” She stood up to leave, and Dean considered asking her to stay before discarding it. If she wanted to, she would. 

“Hey, uh, I know you’re not into the whole superhero thing, but can you keep an eye out for trouble? I mean, there’s hunters in Tacoma, but I bet you’d do a much quicker job at taking care of things.”

Lyla considered that, with a Cas like tilt of her head. “If Shirani asks me to, I will.”

That was probably the best he could hope for. Shirani had actually called him yesterday, but only left a message on his voice mail, which was, in its entirety:  _ “Good job. Now fix the other thing.” _ She was definitely one of Dad’s stranger contacts. 

“Good luck,” Dean said. 

“And to you too,” she said politely, before leaving the bar. 

Wow. Dean never thought he’d meet a shifter he didn’t want to kill, but there was a first time for everything. 

Epilogue

Dean was half convinced this wound on his forehead was never going to heal. Okay, yes, it had only been three days, but the bruise had barely faded at all. He was considering dipping into the witchcraft till to see if he could find something that would help. 

He was woken up by the damn thing. If he slept on it a certain way, it hurt like fuck and instantly woke him, which was what happened now. He considered taking another pain pill, but it didn’t help earlier. Why would it help now?

Dean decided to have a beer. He walked to the bunker’s kitchen and retrieved one, sitting down at the small table. When the bunker was quiet like this, and he was the only person conscious, it was always kind of weird. He sort of liked it at first, and then he sort of hated it. Dean was in no mood to figure out why.

Except right now, he wasn’t the only person awake. Cas walked into the kitchen, almost like he was surprised to see him here. But he couldn’t have been, because Cas didn’t sleep. “Still bothering you?” Cas asked.

Not this again. “You’re not healing me. Save your energy.”

Cas sat down in the chair across from him. He looked tired, which told you he wasn’t anywhere near one hundred percent, because angels weren’t tired either. But there was an added strangeness, because he had taken off his trenchcoat and suit jacket, and was only in his shirt and suit and tie. Still weirdly formal, but in Cas’s case, massively casual. “You hurting hurts me,” Cas said.

“That can’t possibly be true.”

“And yet, it is.” Dean picked at the label on his beer bottle, and Cas studied him closely. “You’re troubled.” Not a question.

Well, at least he knew this wasn’t a dream, because Cas hadn’t read his mind, and also, his head continued to hurt. Pain that punched through your sleep always woke you up. He’d even had pain pull him from unconsciousness. Pain was fun, in that it never let you rest. “I think I’m a monster.”

“You’re not.” he replied, so quickly Dean wasn’t sure he’d actually heard his statement.

“I’ve done some terrible things -“

“As have I,” Cas interrupted. “As has most people. Perfection is counter to the will of the universe.”

Sometimes Dean forgot he was speaking to a quasi-immortal energy being, until he said something like that. “This is way beyond being perfect, Cas.”

“I know. But it’s still true. Flaws are what makes a human a human.” Cas reached across the table, and Dean intercepted his hand. He knew what he was trying to do. 

“Cas.”

“This hurts me. Do you want me to continue hurting?”

Dean gasped. “Holy shit. You know how guilt works now?”

“I have known how guilt works for ages. Pray I don’t utilize it further.”

Was that a deliberate Star Wars reference? Dean was so shocked Cas slipped his hand out of his grasp and touched him on the forehead. There was a moment of warmth, and the ache in his head faded away for the first time in days. Even though it was a defeat of sorts, Dean was grateful. Maybe now he could sleep. “Thanks.”

Cas made a dismissive hand gesture. Which was also sort of a new thing. He was trying very hard to fit in, and the more he tried, the more he stood out. But Dean found it weirdly endearing. “It’s the second to least thing I could do.”

“Was that a joke?”

Cas’s blue eyes widened. “Was it?” And just before Dean was about to buy it, he smiled faintly. 

“You’re getting better,” Dean told him. 

“And so are you. Don’t backslide now.”

Did he completely understand what Cas meant? Not really. But it sounded good, “I’m doing my best.”

And the funny thing? He was. Dean decided to take some comfort from that. 

* * *

The End

**Author's Note:**

> The story with the headless monsters is appropriately called Monsters, as I'm making my own continuity again.


End file.
